Dive Brief:
- AWS launched a generative AI primer course aimed at executives Thursday, available for free on the AWS Skill Builder platform and its YouTube channel.
- “The course addresses a need that we see a lot,” Mark Schwartz, AWS enterprise strategist and former CIO at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said. “It’s what they need to know to start thinking about how generative AI is going to affect their businesses and what sort of things that they can do with it.”
- The course includes five videos that cover the foundational elements, historical context and use cases of the technology, according to AWS. The course also offers executives insights into training and reskilling needed for successful implementation.
Dive Insight:
As the vendor AI push continues, some of the top tech giants are providing courses to help address a key adoption roadblock: in-house skills. Microsoft and Google released no-cost AI training courses in June and May respectively.
Vendors are pairing AI training with a host of other initiatives to boost enterprise adoption. Still, challenges remain.
“When you think about how companies are actually going to use generative AI and other types of machine learning, there are a whole range of challenges that we can see from our experience that are going to become really important to them,” Schwartz said.
Businesses need to be prepared to test different versions of ML models, deploy models securely and implement cost-effective strategies, according to Schwartz. Organizations will also face varying obstacles related to their size.
Large organizations may find change management difficult as employees need to adjust to new ways of working, Schwartz said. Smaller organizations may feel overwhelmed by skills gaps or budget pressures.
Even with roadblocks ahead, organizations want the benefits of the technology. Seven in 10 companies are investigating or exploring generative AI, while 19% have advanced pilots or are in production, according to a Gartner survey of more than 2,500 executives.
