Upskilling yourself can never go wrong. With the current burst of AI/ML, learning the skills required to utilize AI (or have a career) has become important.
While the domain of AI is infinite, with countless things to learn, you can always have a head start over the others with the courses I am about to list down. Whether you are a non-techie, or have a technical background, these courses aim to cover the essentials.
The best part is that all the courses are completely free and will help you gain knowledge and experience. Some come with certifications to help you in your career.
So without further ado, here are the best free AI courses:
1. Generative AI for Everyone
Curated by DeepLearning.AI and taught by one of the most highly regarded professors, Andrew Ng, Generative AI for Everyone is a great place to start for most beginners.
It is presented in an obvious and understandable way. The course consists of three modules for tackling the basics. After this course, you will have an idea about Large Language Modules, Deep Learning, and Generative AI skills.
You are guided across tasks requiring generative AI capabilities in everyday life. So, you can put it to work after you complete the course. The course can be accessed for free using Coursera, you will need to pay a fee if you need the certification.
Highlights:
- Certification Course
- Beginner friendly
- Quizzes and assignments
2. Introduction to Generative AI
Introduction to Generative AI is a free introductory course from Google is a great icebreaker for people who are looking to learn the workings of AI without being extremely technical. This course helps you cover topics about how generative AI works and how it is different from other machine-learning mechanisms. This course will also make you comfortable with some Google AI tools.
The course consists of an hour of content, at the end of which, you receive a badge of completion.
Highlights:
- Beginner-friendly course
- Not extremely technical
- Short duration
- Learn Google AI tools
3. Introduction to Artificial Intelligence with Python
Offered by the renowned Harvard University, CS50's Introduction to AI with Python develops your skills in many foundational AI tasks. CS50, the most popular IT course online, is a prerequisite for this course. It is taught by the same professor, David J.Malan who is also one of the most eminent Computer Scientists.
The course spans 7 weeks and covers topics such as AI algorithms, game-playing engines, handwriting recognition, and machine translation. You will have to devote nearly 10 or more hours a week to finish this course. While this is a beginners' course, reviewers have pointed out that knowing the Python programming language (or any other programming language) should help you get through the course faster.
It is available through edX. If you require a certificate at the end of the course (which is optional), you will need to pay a fee for that.
Highlights:
- Detailed learning
- Self-paced
- Intermediate-level course
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4. Practical Deep Learning
Developed by fast.ai, Practical Deep Learning course takes people with some coding experience, all the way to becoming industrial-grade AI developers. Throughout the course, you learn about Computer vision, NLP, Collaborative filtering, and much more. You will also be using many advanced techniques.
Interesting fact: students from this course have developed an AI algorithm that outperformed the one from Google. Beyond that, the course also holds testimonies from many renowned universities and professors alike.
Highlights:
- 7-week course
- Professional-ready learning
- Incredible testimonies
- Learn about various techniques in Machine Learning
5. AI Chatbots without Programming
Some of the first AI models made available to the public were Chatbots. IBM's AI Chatbots without Programming offers you the opportunity to build just that with no programming knowledge required.
This course is mostly a codeless experience as it uses IBM's own assistant Watson, as the backend for the bot that you develop. This makes this course beginner-friendly and makes it easy for children and students with no programming experience to take an interest in AI.
It is available on edX platform. So, it is free to access and requires an optional premium if you want the certificate.
Highlights:
- Beginner-friendly
- Codeless
- Learn to design chatbots for practical usage
6. Transform Your Business with AI
If you are keen to learn something specific for your business, like focusing on Microsoft's AI tools and implementations, Transform Your Business with AI is the perfect pick.
In this course, you mainly go through how Microsoft is putting AI into its tools, products, and services, you also learn to create a framework for your AI. It consists of four modules, all of which can be finished in around 3 hours.
Highlights:
- Learn how to integrate and use Microsoft AI into your business
- Short course
- Learn about Microsoft's AI tools
7. Data Science: Machine Learning
This is the second entry of a course by Harvard on the list. Unlike some others, there is little to no prerequisite for this course. Here you will learn the basics of machine learning and many popular machine learning algorithms.
By the end of the course, you will have built a movie recommendation system and learned how to perform cross-validation to avoid overtraining. All of this will come in use for building your AI projects and help you master machine learning.
Highlights:
- Beginner Course
- Less time commitment of 2-4 hours a week
- Build your recommendation algorithm
8. Natural Language Processing with Deep Learning
Available for free on YouTube, this course by Stanford University is for those who want to master human language processing in AI models. This course teaches you about Deep Learning and Neural Networks, which will help you create your own NLP model by the end of the course.
However, there is a prerequisite of proficiency in Python, Calculus, Algebra, Probability and Statistics, and foundational machine learning. This course is not for beginners but does end up with you having developed specialization skills in NLP.
Highlights:
- Numerous prerequisites
- Intermediate level
- Taught by some of the best professors in the world
9. Generative AI Essentials: Overview and Impact
A free AI online course presented by the University of Michigan. It focuses on the generative AI capabilities, with tools like ChatGPT as an example.
Generative AI Essentials is a short course (3 hours of content) that helps you get up to speed with generative AI tools and how they work, and how they can be useful. You can access the course for free on Coursera. To get a certificate, you need to pay a fee.
Highlights:
- Beginner friendly
- No technical background required
- Incredibly short
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Bonus: Elements of AI
Elements of AI is a website dedicated to offering free online AI courses for non-technical readers. It is an initiative by the University of Helsinki and MinnaLearn.
You can expect to learn about AI fundamentals, how to build AI, and how to use it for business.
AI Certifications
After you are done learning about AI, you might need a way to certify your mastery over them. This is where Certifications come into play. Below, I have listed down a few AI Certifications you can get, to make your way into the industry.
1. Generative AI LLMs
This certification exam, provided by NVIDIA, helps you to validate your skills related to fundamental ideas for creating, integrating, and managing AI-powered applications with NVIDIA products that use generative AI and large language models (LLMs).
The course costs $135 and consists of 50 questions, that you have to finish in an hour. The certificate is valid for up to 2 years once you have taken the exam.
2. Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Fundamentals
Microsoft's AI certification exam is a good way for you to showcase your skills in machine learning, and Microsoft Azure-related services. You may also be eligible for ACE College Credit, which gives you extra college credits upon passing this exam.
Costing $99, this assessment is 45 minutes long. It is a closed-book exam and is available in many languages for the convenience of the examinee.
3. AWS Certified AI Practitioner
Amazon Web Services is known for numerous things, and of course, it includes AI and ML certifications. This exam tests numerous bases of AI, ranging from use cases, all the way to security and compliance of AI systems. This also opens the gate to multiple AI job roles.
The exam is available in English and Japanese. It costs $75 and is 120 minutes long, consisting of 85 questions.
Wrapping Up
With the help of these courses and certifications, you can jumpstart your career in AI/ML or just get comfortable using AI tools to boost your productivity and integrate it in your business.
There are technical and non-technical courses for AI. You can opt for the one that suits your use-case and per your technical skills (if any). Some are advanced, while others are for complete beginners, pick the one you find best!
💬 I hope you find all the AI courses listed helpful in your learning journey! Did I miss any of your favorites? Let me know in the comments!
Author Info
Swayam Sai Das is a student exploring the realms of Linux as an Intern Writer at It's FOSS. He is dedicated, when trying to push ranks in FPS games and enjoys reading literature classics in an attempt of putting on an academic facade.
