artificial intelligence

artificial intelligence

Microsoft has recently added an artificial intelligence stream to their Professional Program courses.  The stream is open to the public and is comprised of nine online courses.  Each course will take between 8 and 16 hours to complete, as well as a final project.  What’s the purpose of this program?  Well, to provide people with job-ready skills and to give real-world experience to people looking to improve their skills.  Think about it for a minute, though.  AI is relatively new.  Or I should say, it’s expanding to new places.  Which means, there is a need to fill a lot of jobs in this field.

But kids just graduating college aren’t necessarily going to be able to fill these gaps, quickly.  Which is why this kind of makes sense, and it’s a great program.  The program helps people improve their skills in AI and data science through a series of online courses that feature hands-on labs and expert instructors.

artificial intelligence

What’s interesting about the course, is that it focuses on AI ethics. I say this is interesting because this is also an emerging field.  Think Elon Musk and the Robot Uprising.  This is a genuine concern for some people.  How are we using “robots” and what is considered ethical?  If we can’t agree on that, or even figure it out, how can we move forward by making advancements in AI?  More specifically, the courses look at how to conduct a data study and build different learning models.

If you enroll in one of the courses, you have three months to complete each separate course.  These are offered online four times per year.  The final project course is six weeks long and is also offered four times a year.  I like this as well because it gives people the flexibility to be able to choose when they can do a course.  It’s difficult to always find time to update skills, especially when it comes to family and work obligations.  A lot of the time, people are doing these courses outside of these other obligations, so it’s great that they’re going to have the flexibility they need.

artificial intelligence

Once you’ve completed the course, you will receive a digital certificate.  The downside to this is if you want to get credit for each course, you have to purchase Verified Certificates from edX.org, who actually hosts the program.  With so many companies focused on AI, these courses provide ways for people to build their AI skills.  This is incredibly useful and important as more companies recruit AI experts as their development efforts expand.

If you’re interested in the course, you can check it out on Microsoft’s Academy website. If you’re interested in brushing up some of your other skills, you might want to try one of their many other courses  as well:

  • Data Science
  • Big Data
  • Front-End Web Development
  • Cloud Administration
  • DevOps
  • IT Support
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Entry Level Software Development