Microsoft’s Free AI Training: Empowering Enterprises Amidst Skills Shortage

Microsoft has recently announced the official launch of a brand new artificial intelligence (AI) training project with the intention of broadening access to AI skills by providing free coursework. The training courses were developed in collaboration with Microsoft, which owns LinkedIn, and will be made available through the LinkedIn Learning platform.

The introductory ideas of artificial intelligence and frameworks for responsible AI will be covered in the coursework, which will initially launch only in English. Participants will be awarded a certificate of completion in Career Essentials upon successful completion of the course.

In the future, anyone who is interested in instructing classes will have access to a trainer toolset that includes an artificial intelligence course designed just for teachers. A spokesman told that the guide is geared toward trainers within enterprises as well as instructors working in educational institutions.

Even while there is continuing interest in the deployment of generative AI, many businesses still do not have the AI skills necessary for timely implementation. Companies like Microsoft are betting that providing free access to training will encourage businesses to embrace their products.

A poll conducted in June by Equinix with 2,900 IT professionals found that more than two in five IT leaders are concerned about the capacity of their teams to accept the expanding use of artificial intelligence (AI).

Microsoft is not the only company attempting to close the gaps that must be filled in order to effectively use and personalize the plethora of AI technologies that are now available on the market. In May, Google also introduced a collection of generative AI training courses that were made freely available to users. The introduction principles, image creation, image captioning models, encoder-decoder architecture, transformer, and BERT models are all topics that are covered in this course.

Microsoft’s AI skills project includes a worldwide grant program to collect additional ways to train people on generative AI. This is one of the many ways that workers can be trained.

According to the announcement made by Microsoft, the funding is intended to encourage organizations that are concentrating on equitable and community-led applications of generative artificial intelligence with historically excluded populations. The initiative is actively seeking applications from academic or research institutions, as well as social entrepreneurs and nonprofit organizations. The selection of the winners will take place in the fall season.

The AI for Good Lab at Microsoft, as well as data.org and GitHub, which is owned by Microsoft, are the program’s sponsors. The selected cohort will receive monetary assistance in addition to access to resources for cloud computing based on Azure, data training, and technical coaching from specialists employed by both Microsoft and GitHub.

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