Welcome. Congratulations on taking your next step towards learning Artificial Intelligence. You've made a great choice. AI is dramatically altering our lives and shaping our future. The World Economic Forum recently published a report which suggests about 75 million jobs had been lost to machines and algorithms. The report further says that 133 million new roles may emerge due to the rapid evolution of machines and AI in the workplace that translates into 58 million net new jobs that will be created in the next few years alone. If you're entering the workforce, getting skilled in AI represents a great opportunity for a career. For those already in the workforce, re-skilling and up-skilling with future-oriented job skills such as AI is now even more relevant than ever. AI is not a fad. It is the real deal and here to stay and permeate every aspect of our existence. Learning about AI can be a daunting task. There's a flood of information and you may not know where to begin. Let's help you get started on that journey. The Introduction to AI course is designed for everyone. Developers, managers, executives, and students. It doesn't matter if you have background in technology or not. To address the needs of different learners, you'll find this course in multiple programs namely AI Foundations for Everyone Specialization and IBM applied AI Professional. The AI Foundations Specialization does not require any programming knowledge. It can be completed by anyone and does not have any prerequisites. This specialization consists of three courses. From the first course, you will understand what is AI and how it's being used in various industries. In the second course, you will be introduced to various Watson AI services and APIs and what they can be used for. In the third course, you will learn how to build and actually deploy an AI power chat bot on a website. The IBM Applied AI Professional is especially beneficial for those who want to become builders and developers of AI solutions. They will learn how to get started using prebuilt AI smarts without having to create AI models and back-ends from scratch. The first three courses in the Professional Certificate are the same as in the Foundation Specialization but the last two courses requires some knowledge of programming and we provide the Python for data science and AI course to help with that and the building AI applications with Watson APIs, you will utilize multiple Watson AI services and APIs together to build smart applications. For example, you will build an intelligent Virtual Assistant, learn how to add speech and deploy it on a platform like Facebook. In the last course, you will understand computer vision and its applications. You will also build and train custom image classifiers using Watson, Python, and open CV. After completing this Professional Certificate, you'll be armed with skills to start a career in AI as a developer of AI powered applications. If after completing the applied AI Professional you want to further enhance your AI skills. IBM also offers the AI Engineering Professional Certificate. It contains a number of machine learning and deep learning courses and a capstone project. The curriculum in the professional is extensive and prepares you to start a career as an AI engineer. That is, it enables you to start building machine learning and deep learning models using a variety of frameworks like Keras, PyTorch and TensorFlow. The machine and deep learning courses do require prior background in high school level math. We recommend learning in bite-size pieces. You can get started with AI foundations. If you then feel you want to start a career in AI and develop AI applications yourself, then enroll in the applied AI Professional , or if you want to progress your career even further, then subsequently enroll in the AI Engineering Professional Certificate. Using this approach, you will be able to start small, build on top of the skills you're learning and have an opportunity to earn three sets of credentials instead of one. All the courses in the IBM AI specializations and the professional s have lots of hands-on exercises and practical assignments. This way you will develop hands-on skills and build a portfolio of AI projects to showcase to your employers. We hope you're excited to learn about AI. Good luck.
