Took Fundamentals of AI from IBM SkillsBuild Portal.

I’m continuing my journey in learning what are the new technologies (AI, Microsoft or whatever) and how I can best use them to advantage. Last year I took Harvard CS50 Python to learn Python as a prelude to learning data science type of stuff. But I also want to learn AI stuff just so I can figure out how to use it productively.

So, I took an AI Fundamentals class from IBM which is free. It says it is a 10-hour class but it strikes me as taking longer due to the quizzes that you have to pass in order to get certification. I found that course to be a good one for non-techies.

The course gave a broad overview of the history of development, the types of data (structure, semi-structured, and unstructured), types of learning (supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement learning), the process of NLP (natural language processing) breaking down the text to derive meaning, sentiment analysis, computer vision, neural networks, GANs, deep neural network (DNN), algorithms (decision trees, linear regression, logistic regression), generative AI and how it works (VAE, GAN, autoregression) and finally, AI ethics and the 5 pillars (fairness, robustness, explainability, transparency, privacy).

A lot there!

I also took a prompt engineering course which outlined some of the requirements necessary for successful response from the generative AI.

A lot of this stuff, especially the types of learning and the algorithms, I have previously learned from a Data Science book, which would be nice to revisit, if I can find it. I’m wondering where I put it. Did I accidentally leave it at my last place of work? Who would want to read that book? I didn’t find those folks really interested in the analytical stuff – only if they had to be pressed into it.

There are a couple of other courses in IBM that I might want to take. I also want to go back to Harvard and take a probability and statistics course before taking its Data Science with Python.

A lot to learn and so little time! Same thing with reading.

I wish I was superhuman who could learn fast.

One little note: I did have problems with getting back into IBM once I registered and signed up. Twice that happened, so I ended up cramming the materials while I still retained access to SkillsBuild. I’m not sure what is wrong with my account. I was doing this course with 2 other people and at least one of them did not have to go through the mfa. So, my set up is different and inherently a problem. We’ll see how long I can keep accessing the free courses.

I sped through the courses, a variation of cramming, which I don’t really like to do, but I wanted to make sure I learned the basics.

Oh, did I say that the courses are free? Yep, they free!

If you are interested in it, here’s the link to the portal: https://skillsbuild.org/