The 4 Best Free AI Classes and Courses (2024)

Here's the honest truth:

If you want to level up your career with artificial intelligence, you don't just need a list of AI classes and courses…

You need a list of the right AI classes and courses.

Why?

Because AI is moving fast. We've seen an explosion of disruptive  AI innovation that could severely impact millions of knowledge workers across every single field in the next 1-2 years. You need to move now to level up your AI literacy. And you likely don't have time to waste on the wrong type of AI classes and courses.

What do we mean by the “wrong” type of AI classes and courses?

We have nothing against all the credible and competent educators out there. But the simple fact is: If you're just looking to level up your work fast, you don't need a PhD-level technical primer on deep learning, what a neural network is, or natural language processing. All you need to do is understand the fundamentals of AI and how these fundamentals directly apply to your work in order to thrive in the AI-powered economy. 

(So, if you're looking for advice on full college classes or degrees to pursue, this isn't the post for you.)

But the vast majority of knowledge workers out there simply need fast, practical guidance on AI fundamentals and how to best use AI tools in their work. 

The good news? You don't need to be a data scientist or machine learning engineer to do this. In fact, you can get further than 99% of your peers using the courses and classes we've collected here. 

They're some of the best AI courses we've found since our company started educating business leaders on AI way back in 2016. The list is intentionally short, so you can focus on actually completing and acting on the AI education that'll move the need most for you. We also intentionally focused on free ways to learn AI, so you can get started no matter your budget.

Let's dive in.

The Best AI Courses Available for Free

1. Intro to AI from Marketing AI Institute

Intro to AI for Marketers is a free live online AI class offered by Marketing AI Institute. While it has the word “Marketing” in the name, it's applicable to any type of knowledge worker because in just 30 minutes, it teaches you exactly how to understand and get started with artificial intelligence, including:

• What AI is, and why it matters
• How to identify AI use cases in your work and business
• How to find and evaluate AI technology vendors
• What business outcomes AI can help you achieve
• How to measure the value of AI tools on your company's efficiency and performance
• How to prepare your team for piloting and scaling artificial intelligence

We created this class because it's the one we wished had existed when we got started.

Click here to register for the next Intro to AI class.

2. AI for Everyone from Andrew Ng and Coursera

In this course, Andrew Ng, one of the top minds in AI, introduces you to the fundamentals of artificial intelligence for business. The course is designed for beginners, and covers:

• Core AI terminology, including neural networks, machine learning, deep learning, and data science
• An overview of AI's realistic capabilities
• How to spot opportunities to apply AI in your company
• How to navigate ethical and societal discussions about AI

The course takes about 6 hours to complete. 

Click here to enroll for free.

3. Introduction to Generative AI from Google

Google has an excellent introductory course specfically on generative AI that reveals how the technology works without getting overly technical. The course covers:

• What generative AI is and how it works
• An introduction to the large language models (LLMs) that power many generative AI applications
• A primer on responsible AI and how Google applies responsible AI principles

The course has 5 total modules totaling about 5 hours of content. 

Click here to take the course.

4. Introduction to Machine Learning from Google

This is a short 20-minute course offered by Google on the fundamental technology that powers many of the AI tools we use today: machine learning.

In it, you'll learn how to:

• Understand the different types of machine learning
• Understand the key concepts of supervised machine learning
• Think about solving problems with machine learning vs. traditional approaches

Click here to take the course.

Free AI Classes for Extra Credit

The classes and courses above will put you a mile ahead of the pack. But if you want to go deeper—and get much more technical—these more advanced (but still free) artificial intelligence and machine learning courses are also worth checking out. 

Intro to Artificial Intelligence from Udacity

In a TED talk, AI experts Peter Norvig and Sebastian Thrun talked about their success teaching an online AI course with over 100,000 students. That course is available through Udacity, and provides a comprehensive overview of everything from machine learning to natural language processing to computer vision to robotics.

Be aware: Despite having “Intro” in the name, the course does include practical problem sets to complete and is listed as an “Intermediate” difficulty level, though no prior experience is required.

Click here to enroll.

Machine Learning Specialization from Coursera and Stanford University

In another Coursera offering, Andrew Ng offers an in-depth machine learning course in partnership with Stanford University. In it, you'll learn how to:

• Build machine learning models
• Build and train a neural network
• Apply best practices in machine learning development
• Build recommender systems

This one is a doozy. It requires about 10 hours a week for 2 months, and requires having (or learning) some technical chops.

You can enroll starting for free by clicking here.