On June 28 2023, Microsoft and LinkedIn launched the AI Expertise Initiative certificates program, a library of free movies for professionals who’re learners in generative AI. This system goals to show individuals learn how to apply generative AI to their work.
As of December 2024, Microsoft expanded its library to kind the AI Expertise Navigator portal.
What are the Profession Necessities in Generative AI program by Microsoft and LinkedIn?
The Microsoft AI Expertise Initiative, developed with LinkedIn, consists of 5 modules. Each module features a video, and a few are supplemented with quizzes, a workbook file, or each. Finishing all 5 modules provides the learner a Skilled Certificates in Generative AI to show on LinkedIn Studying.
The content material introduced within the AI Expertise Initiative certification skews towards Microsoft’s Copilot as an alternative of its main rival, Google’s Gemini.
The Skilled Certificates on Generative AI coaching will probably be out there in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Simplified Chinese language, and Japanese and will probably be free by way of 2025.
SEE: Learn the way generative AI is remodeling cloud safety. (TechRepublic)
“Now we have the chance to offer foundational data to everybody, in every single place, to assist us all keep forward of the abilities gaps and harness its creativity to retrieve useful data,” mentioned Naria Santa Lucia, common supervisor of digital inclusion at Microsoft, in an e mail to TechRepublic. “As we’re studying, the know-how is studying from us, too, and now we have the ability to form how the know-how can greatest help us.”
SEE: 2025 was the 12 months of agentic AI.
The LinkedIn coaching course is a part of Microsoft’s Expertise for Jobs program, which features a coaching module for academics, trainers, and facilitators exploring synthetic intelligence. Word that a few of the materials focuses on Microsoft Azure and Azure OpenAI.
Generative AI expertise are amongst firms’ high three coaching priorities
Greater than 75% of firms plan to undertake AI within the subsequent 5 years, in keeping with the World Financial Discussion board. Coaching workers to make use of AI and large knowledge is the third-highest firm skills-training precedence firms plan to concentrate on over this era, as highlighted within the WEF Way forward for Jobs 2023 report. That statistic contains generative AI and associated applied sciences, equivalent to machine studying, which fall below the identical umbrella.
The significance of AI within the office is additional underscored by Microsoft’s Might 2024 Work Pattern Index, which discovered that 75% of data employees use AI at work. Nonetheless, 53% of individuals surveyed who use AI at work fear that utilizing it makes them look replaceable.
Moreover, some employees (45%) are nonetheless involved they are going to lose their jobs to AI. However, a proportionate variety of hiring leaders (55%) say they’re involved about not having sufficient expertise to fill roles in 2025.
In final 12 months’s Work Pattern Index, 49% of individuals have been involved about AI making their jobs out of date. On the identical time, 70% are open to the potential for delegating some duties to AI to scale back their workloads.
To deal with these challenges and alternatives, Microsoft proposes upskilling in AI to remediate imbalances. One factor of expertise coaching considerably distinctive to generative AI is the observe of immediate engineering.
“In contrast to different enterprise software program, generative AI instruments require the consumer to coach the software itself,” mentioned Shravan Goli, chief working officer at Coursera, in an e mail to TechRepublic in 2023. “With out good prompts, the software received’t be capable of assist workers increase productiveness in a significant means, and growing productiveness is without doubt one of the most promising elements of generative AI for employees as we speak.”
SEE: This customizable immediate engineer hiring equipment from TechRepublic Premium
He additionally famous that generative AI expertise coaching requires moral oversight, which Coursera considers in its personal free coaching modules.
“As with every rising know-how, society continues to be navigating its broader implications and managing guardrails,” Goli mentioned. “In an effort to leverage this extremely highly effective software whereas nonetheless guaranteeing accountable use by workers, I imagine organizations have to fastidiously define moral tips.”
Word: This story was initially revealed in 2023 and up to date for 2024.
