Microsoft Offers AI Training to Public -- Visual Studio Magazine

Microsoft Offers AI Training to Public

By David Ramel
04/03/2018

To address the confounding shortage of artificial intelligence (AI) skills, Microsoft yesterday announced a new online learning track as part of its Microsoft Professional Program, designed to train qualified individuals for specific job roles.

Called the Microsoft Professional Program in AI, the training module borrows from internal Microsoft educational programs, offering a chance to the public to earn a certificate to prove expertise in cutting-edge technologies including computer vision, natural language processing/translation and Python-based data science.

Learners who sign on and complete the 10-part course can earn the right to purchase a $99 certificate -- which can be easily featured on résumés -- and earn Microsoft Professional Program credits. Alternatively, the course can be monitored for free.

Each course is expected to take between eight and 16 hours to complete. Skills range from an introduction to Python for data science to ethics and law in data and analytics to building models for machine learning and deep learning. The three-month courses start anew at the beginning of each quarter: January, April, July and October.

A four-week final capstone project will put the learned skills to work solving a real-world AI problem. "The project takes the form of a challenge in which you will develop a deep learning solution that is tested and scored to determine your grade," the course site says.

The track is meant to provide job-ready skills through the use of hands-on labs and expert instructors.

"The program is part of a larger corporate effort that also includes the enterprise developer-focused AI School, which provides online videos and other assets to help developers build AI skills," Microsoft said in a blog post yesterday. "That program includes both general educational tools for developers looking to expand AI capabilities and specific guidance on how developers can use Microsoft’s tools and services."

Microsoft said it operates the Microsoft Professional Program in recognition of an industry-wide shortage of qualified developers and others for specific jobs. That shortage is especially noticeable in the AI arena where various other efforts are underway to provide more AI-skilled developers.

About the Author

David Ramel is an editor and writer at Converge 360.

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