Which Generative AI course should I take? What's the job market like?

July 5, 2023 5:53 PM

I play around with ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion quite often, and I’d say I’m pretty comfortable with it, but I’ve noticed that a lot of courses are starting to pop up about ChatGPT. Two courses are down in the extended explanation section.

There’s this Udemy course:



www.udemy.com/course/complete-ai-guide/
As well as a newly announced certification course presented jointly by Microsoft and LinkedIn.



https://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft%20chatgpt%20certification&tbm=



My question is, which one should I take?

My goals are to just make myself more fully rounded with ChatGPT and all of this AI wave. I’d like to get a job where I use this technology to accomplish my tasks, but I’m a bit of a glass is half empty type of guy (what can I say, life has been hard) so I’m afraid to get my hopes up in that area because I’m sure that the market is absolutely flooded with people exactly like me who think that this AI wave can be ridden to new exciting careers, while in reality all the jobs are already taken up by either those very idealists or more likely the preexisting programmers who where already there. Again, I’d love to be wrong, but my spirits were a bit crushed with the UX wave a few years ago: everyone said it was the land of abundant opportunity where if you just take a boot camp course you can pick your job and name your salary, but after spending thousands on a course (14K), taking it super seriously with hard work, only to get out of the course and realize the market is actually flooded already with UX idealists just like me as well as predicting programmers and digital artists who just moved laterally from one position and into another, well, it’s hard to get my hopes up.



So again, while I’d love to be wrong, right now, the immediate goal is to just be more well rounded because I find this stuff really interesting and fun to use.

posted by ggp88 to Education (2 answers total)

I work in a tech role that focuses on using automation to make things quicker and more efficient so AI is a big thing in my world right now.

It's fascinating, and LLMs (Large Language Models) like ChatGPT genuinely do seem to have tipped AI over the edge from "specific" to "somewhat general". That's very exciting. Over the next, say 5-10 years? my guess is that more and more AI tools will find their way into mainstream products, and yes, there will be job opportunities because of this. (I know that prediction is so obvious as to be a cliche, but it's the obvious prediction for a reason)

Knowing how to use ChatGPT or Stable Diffusion or similar products will not be a hindrance to this but that knowledge alone is unlikely to be enough to get a job. If you can work on the back end of AI tools then you're set for life but that is pretty rarefied stuff right now, there are a LOT of PHDs working in AI and that's some stiff competition.

My sightly-less-cliched-but-still-pretty-common prediction is that the majority of new jobs around AI will be around understanding how it affects an existing industry, and how best to either take advantage of it OR not have it take advantage of you. I don't know which of those courses is best for that but if you're looking specifically at the job market then your quickest route is not the programming side of it.

Having a general understanding of the concepts is never a bad thing and will help you be better in a range of related roles. Your UX experience is a good example of this because knowing that stuff would make you a better designer, developer, tester, analyst, etc. But that's not enough on its own, you have to be able to tie that understanding to something specific that people need such as "how to use AI to solve problem x", "how to use AI to make process y an order of magnitude quicker", etc

If I were in your shoes I'd take both courses as long as they interest me and focus on finding ways to use AI tools to solve existing problems you're already familiar with in your industry. That's a marketable skill because you're not an "AI guy" coming in to the industry from the outside (why would you trust that guy?) you're an "industry guy" who's worked out a serious competitive edge using AI (and everyone will want that guy).
posted by underclocked at 11:48 PM on July 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

Here is my glass half empty take: The existence of these courses is not a function of job demand, it's a function of the hype and interest around AI. You've already been caught up in one wave of hype (UX), so you understand how that works. This wave of hype is no different.

Take the course if it interests you, but do not expect to land a job because you have such a certification on your resume. Companies are not creating new positions for people who know how to use ChatGPT. Apply to roles you think could exploit the new wave of AI tools and hype, but don't focus on your AI skills to land those roles. Focus on your domain expertise, because that is what will get your foot in the door.
posted by grog at 8:13 AM on July 6, 2023 [10 favorites]