5 Online Courses With Certificates For High-Income AI Skills in 2024

New research shows that having AI as part of your professional toolkit is now a non-negotiable for career success. A recent Amazon study revealed that employers are willing to pay up to 47% more than the base salary for employees with AI skills, while similarly, an Oxford University study conducted in late 2023 discovered that employers were willing to offer a pay increase of up to 40% more when workers possessed in-demand AI skills.

This demonstrates just how significant and valuable AI skills are. For many executives, how best to implement and adopt AI into their processes, workflows, and work culture is top of mind in 2024, and having AI allies in their current and would-be employees is essential.

Perhaps, this serves to explain why employers are willing to pay higher salaries for workers who demonstrate strong AI skills proficiency, especially since 73% of employers consider hiring talent with AI skills and experience a priority, but nearly three in four cannot find the talent they need, leading to an AI skills gap.

Whether you’re a working professional or you’re currently unemployed, it’s a wise move to acquire this hot commodity—AI skills—before the hype and labor demand begins to fade out.

Here are five online courses, that also come with certificates, to help you learn and build in-demand AI skills this year:

1. AWS Certified AI Practitioner

In response to the growing demand, Amazon Web Services has recently created two courses—one of them being the AWS Certified AI Practitioner—which is aimed at enhancing professionals’ AI skills. This particular certification is foundation-level and is suitable to anyone regardless of their industry background. If you’re a novice to artificial intelligence, studying for this certificate can help you master basic concepts related to ethical AI usage and generative AI.

2. AWS Certified Machine Learning Engineer—Associate

Like it’s twin, this AWS-provided certification helps you enhance AI skills—but is more focused on professionals who have “at least one year of experience building, deploying, and maintaining AI and ML solutions on AWS,” the website says. “It is beneficial for people who want to demonstrate their ability to make AI models available for real-time usage.”

3. Google’s Machine Learning And AI Learning Path

Next up is the machine learning and AI learning path which you can take up with Google Cloud, which walks you through several areas including big data, and AI in Google Cloud. Upon completion of the learning path you can earn skills badges and take the professional machine learning engineer exam, to obtain your certificate.

4. The AI Awakening: Implications for the Economy and Society, by Stanford University

This certificate would be good for you to consider if you work in leadership or management, or are considering climbing the corporate ladder into leadership and management roles, including program and project management. It also might be useful to consider if you work within HR. This course by Stanford University (via Coursera) teaches about AI capabilities and its benefits to the workforce and to the global economy through start-ups, as well as the potential risks and important ethical factors to be aware of.

5. IBM AI Developer Professional Certificate

This professional certification offered via Coursera by IBM, teaches you AI skills at the foundational, beginner level, and according to the website, equips you for the workforce in as little as six months. Some of the job-readiness AI skills it covers include large language models (LLMS), AI prompting, and Python.

These courses range from basic and foundational, to more complex, and most are suitable for you to upskill regardless of your background. This year, take your professional development seriously, and commit to polishing your AI skills and knowledge so you can have access to more career opportunities and land higher-paying jobs.