Seven new no-cost generative AI training courses to advance your cloud career

Editor's note: This blog has been updated since it originally published to reflect the total number of generative AI courses that have become available since the publish date.

An AI/ML (artificial intelligence/machine learning) career path can be a great specialty area within the cloud—and one of the most accessible! Because this area is constantly developing, most recently with the rise of generative AI, I want to share some recommendations to help you chart a sustainable career as AI/ML continues to evolve.

Generative AI falls under the overall category of AI and offers a new and exciting way of interacting with information, brands, and other people. Let’s talk about how these disciplines work together and about materials available to help you upskill in these areas.

To this end, we are happy to announce a new set of generative AI training content available at no cost. So, whether you are just getting started or already have a more advanced role, read on to find ways to help reach your desired position. 

ML compared to AI

While the terms ML and AI are often used interchangeably, there are distinct differences. AI is an umbrella concept wherein machines are taught to perform tasks normally associated with human intelligence, such as decision-making and language interaction. ML is a subset of AI dedicated to taking data from the past and training algorithms to create models that can perform highly complex tasks without being explicitly programmed. It’s the basis for most forms of AI that people interact with, like virtual assistants, music recommendations, and chatbots.

Data engineers and ML engineers work with data scientists to get insights from data. They are needed to create software models and get clear results, and develop deployable applications. These skilled roles are needed in every industry!

Change the world for the better with generative AI

I recently wrote about four key pillars of technology trends expected in the next decade, including the role of AI/ML in the cloud environment as one of those pillars, and how you can bridge the skills gap and build your career.

Generative AI is a new type of ML that has made a lot of headlines recently. Research from CIO Dive finds that seven in 10 executives say their companies are investigating or exploring generative AI. Now is a great time to become an expert, while we are at the cusp of this technology becoming more widely adopted. 

To get to generative AI, we need to talk first about deep learning. Deep learning is a subset of ML that uses artificial neural networks to process more complex patterns than traditional ML. Generative AI sits still further down the funnel, as a subset of deep learning that typically involves the Transformer architecture. Essentially, it’s a type of AI that can map long-range dependencies and patterns in large training sets, then use what it learns to produce new content, including text, imagery, audio, and synthetic data.

Generative AI relies on large models, such as large language models (LLMs) that can classify and generate text, answer questions, and summarize documents. For more detail about how this works, check out the video below from Google I/O 2023, which features great information from Dr. Gwendolyn Stripling, Artificial Intelligence Technical Curriculum Developer for Google Cloud.

How Google is offering generative AI

Here at Google, we’ve been heavily invested for decades in research and innovation aimed at helping businesses, governments, and developers maximize the potential of AI. Our vision is to empower builders, innovators, developers, and doers to use AI in unique, responsible, productive ways. 

To deliver on this, we recently announced a variety of solutions to bring generative AI into our offerings, beginning with Generative AI support on Vertex AI and Gen App Builder. 

Vertex AI is Google Cloud’s ML platform for training and deploying ML models and AI applications. With Generative AI support on Vertex AI, data science teams and developers can access foundation models from both Google and other sources, helping them to quickly build, customize, and deploy models for their own use cases. 

As part of generative AI support on Vertex AI, Model Garden and Generative AI Studio are now in preview, including access to PaLM 2 for Text and Chat and Embeddings API for Text, while other features and services are available to select trusted testers. If you’d like early access to Google Cloud’s AI products, join the waitlist here.

We announced our latest PaLM model in production at I/O 2023: PaLM 2. Today, it powers more than 25 products! Additionally, we’ve fine-tuned PaLM 2 for specific use cases, including security and medical domains. You’ve probably also heard of Bard, our experiment for conversational AI, which is fully running on PaLM 2. 

Our Gen App Builder aims to make customer, partner, and employee interactions more effective and helpful. With it, developers — even those with limited data science expertise — can quickly create bots, chat apps, digital assistants, custom search engines, and more. Gen App Builder even makes it possible to create some generative AI apps without any coding skills. 

Now, let’s bring these products to life! Not sure exactly the use case or in need of a little inspiration? Check out this blog from Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian to see how customers and partners in the ecosystem are bringing ideas to life with generative AI. And watch this video to see generative AI in action!

Build your AI/ML skills and validate your knowledge to grow your career

There is a lot of excitement around generative AI—it’s truly a brand new path to consider for your AI/ML career! Check out my recommendations below for training options for AI/ML roles. These will help you gain critical skills as generative AI becomes more widely available.

*NEW* training materials, specific to generative AI technologies
Generative AI Learning Path - no cost training 

• [Course] Introduction to Generative AI (1 day)
  
• [Course] Introduction to Large Language Models (1 day)
  
• [Course] Attention Mechanism (1 day)
  
• [Course] Transformer Models and BERT Model (1 day)
  
• [Course] Introduction to Image Generation (1 day)
  
• [Course] Create Image Captioning Models (1 day)
  
• [Course] Encoder-Decoder Architecture (1 day)
  

Additional AI/ML training - varying learning credits required to complete on Google Cloud Skills Boost 
Introductory level

[Course with completion badge] How Google Does Machine Learning (1 day)

[Course with completion badge] MLOps: Getting Started (1 day)

[Skill badge] Get started with TensorFlow on Google Cloud (8 hours)  

[Skill badge] Perform foundational ML, AI and data tasks in Google Cloud (7 hours)

[Course with completion badge] Language, Speech, Text, and Translation with Google Cloud APIs (5 hours)

Intermediate/Multi-level

[Learning Path] Machine Learning Engineer (Collection of 15 video courses and labs) 

[Skill badge] Build and Deploy Machine Learning Solutions on Vertex AI (1 day)

Advanced

[Training + certification exam] Google Cloud Professional ML Engineer Certification (varied time)

[Skill badge] Machine Learning with TensorFlow in Vertex AI (90 minutes)

[Course with completion badge] Natural Language Processing in Google Cloud (1 day)

You can also catch up on hands-on demos in our most recent Cloud OnBoard: From Data to AI with BigQuery and Vertex AI. In it, we guide you through all steps of the data-to-AI solution.

Coming up on June 29, we are hosting Getting Started with Vertex Generative AI as part of Innovators Live. Register now!

I also encourage you to consider an Innovators Plus subscription. You get access to over 700 labs, skill badges and courses (including many that are specific to AI/ML), a certification exam voucher, and up to $1,000 in Google Cloud credits. You’ll also get access to live learning events and technical briefings with Google Cloud experts, plus 1:1 consultations (talk with us about your upcoming generative AI project!). It’s a $1,500 package for only $299. Learn more!