Amazon has announced plans to upskill two million people by 2025 as part of its new “AI Ready” initiative, which includes a range of courses and content designed to help workers understand AI and scale existing programs.
The company says it’s a response to global AI trends – according to a report jointly released by the company, nine in 10 (92%) organizations plan to use AI-powered solutions and AI tools by 2028.
The study also reveals that workers with AI expertise could earn up to 47% more, likely accentuated by the global skills shortage, with three in four employers reporting that they can’t find the right talent.
Amazon announces more free AI training
From launch, the company has made eight free courses available, focusing on AI and generative AI. The courses consist of three catering to businesses and nontechnical audiences, and a further five designed to upskill developers and technical audiences.
Amazon has also announced $12 million worth of scholarships through its AWS Generative AI Scholarship program, which is hoped to give 50,000 high school and university students from underserved and underrepresented communities globally access to Udacity scholarships.
Finally, Amazon Future Engineer has collaborated with Code.org to launch its own Hour of Code activity designed to encourage future generations to explore a career in coding and AI, starting with an hour-long session that will see students use emojis and AI prompts to choreograph virtual dancers to the backing track of popular hit songs.
The collaboration will also see AWS give Code.org $8 million in AWS Cloud computing credits, which it says is to support Hour of Code.
Amazon says that the new initiatives join an existing catalog of more than 80 free and low-cost AI courses and resources, and that it’s committed to providing free cloud computing skills training to 29 million people by 2025.
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