Amazon Offers Free AI Courses, Aiming to Help 2 Million People Build AI Skills by 2025

Late last year, Ama­zon announced AI Ready, a new ini­tia­tive “designed to pro­vide free AI skills train­ing to 2 mil­lion peo­ple glob­al­ly by 2025.” This includes eight free AI and gen­er­a­tive AI cours­es, some designed for begin­ners, and oth­ers designed for more advanced stu­dents.

As the Wall Street Jour­nal pod­cast notes above, Ama­zon cre­at­ed the AI Ready ini­tia­tive with three goals in mind: 1) to increase the over­all num­ber of peo­ple in the work­force who have a basic under­stand­ing of AI, 2.) to com­pete with Microsoft and oth­er big com­pa­nies for AI tal­ent, and 3.) to expose a large num­ber of peo­ple to Ama­zon’s AI sys­tems.

For those new to AI, you may want to explore these AI Ready cours­es:

You can find more infor­ma­tion (includ­ing more free cours­es) on this AI Ready page. We have oth­er free AI cours­es list­ed in the Relat­eds below.

Note: Until Feb­ru­ary 1, 2024, Cours­era is run­ning a spe­cial deal where you can get $200 off of Cours­era Plus and gain unlim­it­ed access to cours­es & cer­tifi­cates, includ­ing a lot of cours­es on AI. Get details here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence for Every­one: An Intro­duc­to­ry Course from Andrew Ng, the Co-Founder of Cours­era

A New Course Teach­es You How to Tap the Pow­ers of Chat­G­PT and Put It to Work for You

Gen­er­a­tive AI for Every­one: A Free Course from AI Pio­neer Andrew Ng

Google Launch­es a Free Course on Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: Sign Up for Its New “Machine Learn­ing Crash Course”

How to Learn Data Ana­lyt­ics in 2024: Earn a Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate That Will Help Pre­pare You for a Job in 6 Months

Stanford Continuing Studies Offering a Course on the History & Music of the Grateful Dead, Taught by David Gans: Starts on Monday, January 22

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

A quick heads up: On Mon­day, Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies will kick off an online course called Psy­che­delia and Groove: The Music and Cul­ture of the Grate­ful Dead. Taught by David Gans (author of Play­ing in the Band: An Oral and Visu­al Por­trait of the Grate­ful Dead), the course got a nice shout out from drum­mer Mick­ey Hart on Insta­gram. Open to any adult, the course descrip­tion reads:

The Grate­ful Dead­’s ground­break­ing fusion of music, coun­ter­cul­ture, and com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment forged an endur­ing lega­cy that tran­scends gen­er­a­tions while shap­ing the evo­lu­tion of music and cul­tur­al expres­sion. Fresh off the farewell per­for­mance of Dead & Com­pa­ny in San Fran­cis­co in July, this course invites stu­dents to delve into the phe­nom­e­non that is the Grate­ful Dead through a cap­ti­vat­ing explo­ration of the band’s his­to­ry, music, and cul­tur­al impact.

The course will start by trac­ing the band’s evo­lu­tion, from its hum­ble begin­nings to its leg­endary sta­tus as one of the most influ­en­tial bands in music his­to­ry. We will explore the band’s for­ma­tion, the ear­ly San Fran­cis­co music scene, its unique approach to tour­ing, and the var­i­ous eras of its exis­tence. We’ll next embark on a son­ic jour­ney through the band’s diverse and ever-evolv­ing musi­cal cat­a­log. Stu­dents will dis­sect the dis­tinc­tive blend of rock, folk, blues, and impro­vi­sa­tion that defined the Grate­ful Dead­’s sound.

Final­ly, we’ll exam­ine the band’s cul­tur­al impact on soci­ety, div­ing into the band’s con­nec­tion to art, lit­er­a­ture, and social change, as well as its unique fan cul­ture and the phe­nom­e­non of the “Dead­head.” By the end of the course, stu­dents will have a well-round­ed appre­ci­a­tion for the roots, strug­gles, and mile­stones that shaped the Grate­ful Dead’s tra­jec­to­ry, an under­stand­ing of its pro­found impact on music and cul­ture, and insight into a lega­cy that still res­onates deeply today.

Guest speak­ers for this course will include Steve Sil­ber­man, who was fea­tured in the doc­u­men­tary Long Strange Trip and is a reg­u­lar voice on the Good Ol’ Grate­ful Dead­cast. He is also a co-author of Skele­ton Key: A Dic­tio­nary for Dead­heads.

Again, the course starts on Mon­day, Jan­u­ary 22. Tuition is $405. You can enroll here.

Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies also offers many oth­er cours­es online, across many dis­ci­plines, at a rea­son­able price. Check out the cat­a­logue here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Stream a Mas­sive Archive of Grate­ful Dead Con­certs from 1965–1995

The Grate­ful Dead Movie: Watch It Free Online

How the Grate­ful Dead’s “Wall of Sound”–a Mon­ster, 600-Speak­er Sound System–Changed Rock Con­certs & Live Music For­ev­er

How to Learn Data Analytics in 2024: Earn a Professional Certificate That Will Help Prepare You for a Job in 6 Months

We’re liv­ing in the age of data. Every sec­ond, mas­sive amounts of data are being gen­er­at­ed, processed, ana­lyzed and, yes, mon­e­tized. Com­pa­nies, gov­ern­ments, and individuals–they’re all awash in data and try­ing to make sense of it. That makes Data Ana­lyt­ics a valu­able skill for pro­fes­sion­als of all ages.

Enter Google, which has launched a pro­fes­sion­al cer­tifi­cate in Data Ana­lyt­ics–one that will “have you job-ready in less than 6 months.” Offered on the Cours­era plat­form, the Data Ana­lyt­ics Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate con­sists of eight cours­es, includ­ing “Foun­da­tions: Data, Data, Every­where,” “Pre­pare Data for Explo­ration,” “Data Analy­sis with R Pro­gram­ming,” and “Share Data Through the Art of Visu­al­iza­tion.” Over­all this pro­gram “includes over 180 hours of instruc­tion and hun­dreds of prac­tice-based assess­ments, which will help you sim­u­late real-world data ana­lyt­ics sce­nar­ios that are crit­i­cal for suc­cess in the work­place. The con­tent is high­ly inter­ac­tive and exclu­sive­ly devel­oped by Google employ­ees with decades of expe­ri­ence in data ana­lyt­ics.”

Upon com­ple­tion, students–even those who haven’t pur­sued a col­lege degree–can direct­ly apply for jobs (e.g., junior or asso­ciate data ana­lyst, data­base admin­is­tra­tor, etc.) with Google and over 150 U.S. employ­ers, includ­ing Deloitte, Tar­get, and Ver­i­zon. You can start a 7‑day free tri­al and explore the cours­es here. If you con­tin­ue beyond the free tri­al, Google/Coursera will charge $49 USD per month. That trans­lates to about $300 after 6 months, the time esti­mat­ed to com­plete the cer­tifi­cate.

Explore the Data Ana­lyt­ics Cer­tifi­cate by watch­ing the video above. Learn more about the over­all Google career cer­tifi­cate ini­tia­tive here. And find oth­er Google pro­fes­sion­al cer­tifi­cates here.

Note: Open Cul­ture has a part­ner­ship with Cours­era. If read­ers enroll in cer­tain Cours­era cours­es and pro­grams, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture.

A Busy Person’s Introduction to Large Language Models (LLMs)

You’re busy. You don’t have much time to fig­ure out the deal with Large Lan­guage Mod­els (aka LLMs). But you have some curios­i­ty. Enter Andrej Karpa­thy and his pre­sen­ta­tion, “A Busy Per­son­’s Intro­duc­tion to Large Lan­guage Mod­els.” It’s a one-hour tuto­r­i­al that explains “the core tech­ni­cal com­po­nent behind sys­tems like Chat­G­PT, Claude, and Bard.” Designed for a gen­er­al audi­ence, the video explains what Large Lan­guage Mod­els (LLMs) are, and where Karpa­thy sees them going. Andrej knows what he’s talk­ing about. He cur­rent­ly works for Ope­nAI (the mak­er of Chat­G­PT), and, before that, he served as the direc­tor of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence at Tes­la.

As one YouTube com­menter put it, “Andrej is hands-down one of the best ML [Machine Learn­ing] edu­ca­tors out there.” At Stan­ford, he was the pri­ma­ry instruc­tor for the first deep learn­ing class, which has become one of the largest cours­es at the uni­ver­si­ty. Enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Gen­er­a­tive AI for Every­one: A Free Course from AI Pio­neer Andrew Ng

Neur­al Net­works for Machine Learn­ing: A Free Online Course Taught by Geof­frey Hin­ton

Google Launch­es a Free Course on Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: Sign Up for Its New “Machine Learn­ing Crash Course”

Stephen Fry Reads Nick Cave’s Stir­ring Let­ter About Chat­G­PT and Human Cre­ativ­i­ty: “We Are Fight­ing for the Very Soul of the World”

Noam Chom­sky on Chat­G­PT: It’s “Basi­cal­ly High-Tech Pla­gia­rism” and “a Way of Avoid­ing Learn­ing”

Generative AI for Everyone: A Free Course from AI Pioneer Andrew Ng

Andrew Ng–an AI pio­neer and Stan­ford com­put­er sci­ence professor–has released a new course called Gen­er­a­tive AI for Every­one. Designed for a non-tech­ni­cal audi­ence, the course will “guide you through how gen­er­a­tive AI works and what it can (and can’t) do. It includes hands-on exer­cis­es where you’ll learn to use gen­er­a­tive AI to help in day-to-day work.”  The course also explains “how to think through the life­cy­cle of a gen­er­a­tive AI project, from con­cep­tion to launch, includ­ing how to build effec­tive prompts,” and it dis­cuss­es “the poten­tial oppor­tu­ni­ties and risks that gen­er­a­tive AI tech­nolo­gies present to indi­vid­u­als, busi­ness­es, and soci­ety.” Giv­en the com­ing preva­lence of AI, it’s worth spend­ing six hours with this course (the esti­mat­ed time need­ed to com­plete it). You can audit Gen­er­a­tive AI for Every­one for free, and watch all of the lec­tures at no cost. If you would like to take the course and earn a cer­tifi­cate, it will cost $49.

Gen­er­a­tive AI for Every­one will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Google Launch­es a Free Course on Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: Sign Up for Its New “Machine Learn­ing Crash Course”

Com­put­er Sci­en­tist Andrew Ng Presents a New Series of Machine Learn­ing Courses–an Updat­ed Ver­sion of the Pop­u­lar Course Tak­en by 5 Mil­lion Stu­dents

Stephen Fry Reads Nick Cave’s Stir­ring Let­ter About Chat­G­PT and Human Cre­ativ­i­ty: “We Are Fight­ing for the Very Soul of the World”

Robert Reich’s UC Berkeley Course on Wealth & Poverty Is Free Online

Once the Sec­re­tary of Labor under the Clin­ton Admin­is­tra­tion, Robert Reich spent 17 years teach­ing at UC Berke­ley. This past spring, he taught his final course there, and it’s now avail­able online. Above, you can stream 14 lec­tures from “Wealth and Pover­ty,” a course “designed to pro­vide stu­dents with a deep­er under­stand­ing of both the orga­ni­za­tion of the polit­i­cal econ­o­my in the Unit­ed States and of oth­er advanced economies, and why the dis­tri­b­u­tion of earn­ings, wealth, and oppor­tu­ni­ty have been diverg­ing in the Unit­ed States and in oth­er nations.” Usu­al­ly attend­ed by 750 Berke­ley under­grad­u­ates, the course is also “intend­ed to pro­vide insights into the polit­i­cal and pub­lic-pol­i­cy debates that have arisen in light of this diver­gence, as well as pos­si­ble means of revers­ing it.”

“Wealth and Pover­ty” will be added to our list of free Eco­nom­ics cours­es, a sub­set of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Robert Reich Debunks Three Eco­nom­ic Myths by Draw­ing Car­toons

Kurt Von­negut Pon­ders Why “Poor Amer­i­cans Are Taught to Hate Them­selves” in a Time­ly Pas­sage from Slaugh­ter­house-Five

Hand-Col­ored Maps of Wealth & Pover­ty in Vic­to­ri­an Lon­don: Explore a New Inter­ac­tive Edi­tion of Charles Booth’s His­toric Work of Social Car­tog­ra­phy (1889)

 

Noam Chomsky Teaches a MasterClass on Critical Thinking & Media Literacy

“We now have to decide with­in a cou­ple of decades whether the human exper­i­ment is going to con­tin­ue or whether it’ll go down in glo­ri­ous dis­as­ter,” says Noam Chom­sky in a new inter­view on econ­o­mist Tyler Cowen’s pod­cast Con­ver­sa­tions with Tyler. “That’s what we’re fac­ing. We know answers, at least pos­si­ble answers to all of the prob­lems that face us. We’re not pur­su­ing them.” This came in response to one of Cowen’s stan­dard ques­tions, about the guest’s “pro­duc­tion func­tion”: that is, the meth­ods or sys­tems the guest uses to remain pro­duc­tive in their work. Such a line of inquiry is espe­cial­ly per­ti­nent in Chom­sky’s case, giv­en the famous­ly intense work sched­ule he main­tains as a pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al at the age of 94.

Recent­ly, that sched­ule has also involved shoot­ing a Mas­ter­class on Inde­pen­dent Think­ing and the Medi­a’s Invis­i­ble Pow­ers, whose trail­er appears above. In the course\, Chom­sky “explores the dark side of media,” teach­ing us “to cut through pro­pa­gan­da, defend against manip­u­la­tion, and con­trol what you con­sume.”

Pro­pa­gan­da, manip­u­la­tion, and con­sump­tion are major themes of his work (one for­gets that he first became well-known as a lin­guist), and he became pop­u­lar­ly asso­ci­at­ed with them thanks in large part to Man­u­fac­tur­ing Con­sent, the 1988 book he co-wrote with Edward S. Her­man. Of course, the media land­scape looked quite dif­fer­ent 35 years ago, and this Mas­ter­class — a class of prod­uct scarce­ly imag­in­able back then — offers him an oppor­tu­ni­ty to bring his views into the twen­ty-twen­ties.

“Social media tends to dri­ve peo­ple into self-rein­forc­ing bub­bles,” Chom­sky says in the trail­er. “It’s dri­ving peo­ple even to more extreme views.” This is the kind of lament one now hears aired three or four times before break­fast, but sel­dom from a fig­ure who’s been the­o­riz­ing about the under­ly­ing forces as long as Chom­sky has. Social media may offer an avenue of free­dom from the stan­dard suite of top-down main­stream nar­ra­tives, but it may also con­sti­tute just anoth­er “pow­er sys­tem,” which by its very nature seeks only “con­trol and dom­i­na­tion.” Encour­ag­ing the habits of crit­i­cal think­ing need­ed to resist such con­trol and dom­i­na­tion has long been essen­tial to Chom­sky’s project. And the stakes of that project, as he’ll sure­ly nev­er stop seek­ing plat­forms from which to tell the world, could hard­ly be high­er. Explore Noam Chom­sky Teach­es Inde­pen­dent Think­ing and the Medi­a’s Invis­i­ble Pow­ers here.

Note: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Noam Chomsky’s Ground­break­ing Lin­guis­tic The­o­ries

Noam Chom­sky Defines What It Means to Be a Tru­ly Edu­cat­ed Per­son

Noam Chom­sky on Chat­G­PT: It’s “Basi­cal­ly High-Tech Pla­gia­rism” and “a Way of Avoid­ing Learn­ing”

Noam Chom­sky Explains the Best Way for Ordi­nary Peo­ple to Make Change in the World, Even When It Seems Daunt­ing

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Noam Chomsky’s Man­u­fac­tur­ing Con­sent and How the Media Cre­ates the Illu­sion of Democ­ra­cy

When Rage Against the Machine Inter­viewed Noam Chom­sky (1999)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Google & Coursera Create a Career Certificate That Prepares Students for Cybersecurity Jobs in 6 Months

This spring, Google has launched sev­er­al online cer­tifi­cate pro­grams designed to help stu­dents land an entry-lev­el job, with­out nec­es­sar­i­ly hav­ing a col­lege degree. The tech com­pa­ny’s lat­est pro­gram cov­ers Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty, a field that stands poised to grow as com­pa­nies become more dig­i­tal, and cyber­at­tacks inevitably con­tin­ue.

Offered on Cours­er­a’s edu­ca­tion­al plat­form, the new Google Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate fea­tures eight online cours­es, which col­lec­tive­ly help stu­dents learn how to:

  • Under­stand the impor­tance of cyber­se­cu­ri­ty prac­tices and their impact for orga­ni­za­tions.
  • Iden­ti­fy com­mon risks, threats, and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, as well as tech­niques to mit­i­gate them.
  • Pro­tect net­works, devices, peo­ple, and data from unau­tho­rized access and cyber­at­tacks using Secu­ri­ty Infor­ma­tion and Event Man­age­ment (SIEM) tools.
  • Gain hands-on expe­ri­ence with Python, Lin­ux, and SQL.

The Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate joins a larg­er col­lec­tion of cer­tifi­cate pro­grams cre­at­ed by Google, with sub­jects cov­er­ing User Expe­ri­ence Design, Busi­ness Intel­li­gence, Data Ana­lyt­ics, Advanced Data Ana­lyt­ics, Project Man­age­ment, IT Sup­port and final­ly IT Automa­tion.

Stu­dents can take indi­vid­ual cours­es in these pro­fes­sion­al cer­tifi­cate pro­grams for free. (Above, you can watch video from the first course in the cyber­se­cu­ri­ty cer­tifi­cate pro­gram, enti­tled “Foun­da­tions of Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty.”) How­ev­er, if you would like to receive a cer­tifi­cate, Cours­era will charge $49 per month (after an ini­tial 7‑day free tri­al peri­od). That means that the Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate, designed to be com­plet­ed in 6 months, will cost rough­ly $300 in total.

Once stu­dents com­plete the cyber­se­cu­ri­ty cer­tifi­cate, they can add the cre­den­tial to their LinkedIn pro­file, resume, or CV. As a perk, stu­dents in the U.S. can also con­nect with 150+ employ­ers (e.g., Amer­i­can Express, Col­gate-Pal­mo­live, T‑Mobile, Wal­mart, and Google) who have pledged to con­sid­er cer­tifi­cate hold­ers for open posi­tions. Accord­ing to Cours­era, this cer­tifi­cate can pre­pare stu­dents to become an entry-lev­el “cyber­se­cu­ri­ty ana­lyst and SOC (secu­ri­ty oper­a­tions cen­ter) ana­lyst.”

You can start a 7‑day free tri­al of the Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate here.

Note: Open Cul­ture has a part­ner­ship with Cours­era. If read­ers enroll in cer­tain Cours­era cours­es and pro­grams, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.