Want to learn about AI? IBM is offering free courses

It might shock you to learn that artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t actually all that new. Before ChatGPT made its splash, OpenAI Five played Dota 2 — and was pretty good at it.

Before that there was IBM Watson, a system developed to answer questions from natural language prompts back in 2011, and Deep Blue, IBM’s Chess-playing supercomputer that beat grandmaster Garry Kasparov in 1997. With credentials like that, who wouldn’t want a chance to expand their AI knowledge without paying a cent?

IBM AI knowledge for free

It isn’t exactly a completely new thing but in case you didn’t know, IBM has an entire platform, called SkillsBuild, that offers free job skills, courses, and credentials for free. If that sounds appealing (who doesn’t like free knowledge?), you’ll need to create a free account on the platform before you can progress.

Of the plethora of courses available, the Artificial Intelligence Fundamentals course seems particularly relevant today and a good place to start if you’re feeling left out of the AI conversation at the dinner table.

The course comprises six modules and should take roughly ten hours to complete. Once you’re well-versed in natural language processing and computer vision, machine and deep learning, and AI ethics, you’ll receive a digital credential that’ll look rather spiffy on your CV and LinkedIn profile. If those reasons don’t interest you it could still be worth it just to throw your newfound knowledge around at the family braai.