A Review of the Best-Rated Courses to Learn AI for Beginners

AI is taking the world by storm, and analysts project it to add 15.7 trillion dollars to the global economy in the next seven years. There’s no doubt the revolution is here to stay. The question is, “How can I be a part of the AI revolution?”

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a rapidly-growing field. As a result, AI is becoming more prevalent in our daily lives. It has the potential to impact our lives positively in many ways. The consensus right now is that AI is out to take your job. But this is not entirely true. While more efficient machines are replacing some jobs, AI is also set to create more jobs. So, as an individual, it’s in your best interest to learn relevant skills to add value.

Learning a new skill is intimidating. The truth is, it will be a lot of work. Our goal is to simplify that process. This article is not just a list of the best courses to learn AI but an ultimate review of the top-rated AI courses, both free and paid. This piece will give you a proper introduction to the field. Whether you’re a student, enthusiast, or curious mind interested in AI, we’ve got you covered.

Top-Rated AI Courses

What are the top-rated courses for beginners to learn Artificial Intelligence?

1. AI for everyone (Coursera)

Rating: 4.8 Pricing: Free/$49.99

AI for Everyone is the brainchild of Andrew Ng, co-founder of Coursera, professor at Stanford, and founder of DeepLearning AI. According to many people, AI for Everyone is one of the best courses for beginners in artificial intelligence and machine learning. This course introduces AI to beginners in a simplified way. It explains what AI can do and how it would benefit businesses and individuals. The course provides exposure to coding and programming. It also explains the concept of AI and how to navigate the world of Artificial Intelligence. And it does this without all the technicalities. The course is a beginner-level course that is entirely online and presents a certificate upon completion. The best part is that it is flexible. If you’re a student or already work at a job, you can take this course at any time to fit your schedule. It takes approximately 11 hours to complete and is available in about 15 languages. Other past students have a thing or two to say about the topic; also, many of them are positive. Some say the course equipped them with all they needed to approach AI and other courses with the right mindset. One even said it’s an “excellent course for one to start on solid ground.” Although, some students complained that it was non-technical and seemed like the creators designed it for the layman. That’s just what the course promised. However, you need to note that even though there’s a free plan, it has limited access and doesn’t offer a certificate. In addition, the fee is not refundable, and your certificate exists only digitally.

AI for Everyone Syllabus

• What is AI
• Building AI projects
• Building AI in your company
• AI and society This course spans a learning period of 4 weeks.

2. Creativity and AI Specialization (Coursera)

Rating: 4.6 Pricing: $49.99

This course Specialization is a three-part course that walks you through the theories and techniques used in AI products like ChatGPT by OpenAI. It also examines the place of creative AI in business and organizational strategies. Through both theoretical and practical approaches, the student will discover how to use AI to improve creativity. The course also provides real-world scenarios that teach you how to apply artificial creativity to human-centered problems. The course approaches artificial intelligence from a design and creativity angle. It also allows you to engage with other learners to expand your understanding through discussions. Professor Jeongki Lim teaches the course. In this three-part course, you can decide to take it all or select one or two parts to take. However you do it, you get a certificate for every part you complete. Like every Coursera course, the course is entirely online so that you can learn according to your time. And at a pace of 3 hours/week, you should finish the course in 4 months. Unfortunately, the course does not have a free package, but you have a 7-days free trial offer. Most past students had only good comments to make about this course. However, some could not say enough about the quality of the teacher. And another describes it as “an eye-opening learning experience. It changed my perspective on the ways I could help advance my field.”

Creativity and AI Specialization Syllabus

Part 1

• Artificial Creativity
• Can machines be creative?
• The poetical science of AI
• Advanced Theories and Techniques Behind Artificial Creativity: Part I
• How to Make Things Creative II Part 2
• Natural Creativity
• Unpacking creativity
• Creativity over time
• Theoretical Concepts and Frameworks Around Creativity
• Exploring Perceptions of Beautiful vs. Meaningful Part 3
• Creative Artifacts
• Creative by design
• Exploring personal creativity with AI
• Creative organizations
• Creative economies The course is estimated to take four months. However, Coursera has a recommended scheme that you can follow to complete the course comfortably.

3. Modern AI with no coding (Udemy)

Rating: 4.6 Pricing: $64

One of the scariest parts of learning AI is coding. Learning AI is fun until you write code or implement a program. This course from Udemy helps you get around that, teaching you how to build and train AI using just Google Teachable Machine. Google Teachable Machine is a tool that helps people create machine learning models without using code. This course teaches you how to build extremely functional machine learning models, and you don’t have to be a programmer. With practicals, you would be building functioning machine-learning models during this course.

AI is becoming more powerful every day, and while everyone is trying to get into AI, it is intimidating for those who need a coding background. This course shows you the power of AI, even without coding. In this course, you would learn crucial basic knowledge while creating interesting practical models. The models you would create in this course would take on simple and very complex tasks. The course is for beginners who want to make functional AI but need coding skills to participate actively. The course is also valuable for business owners who want to use AI to boost their productivity. Learning to code takes a lot of time, and this course teaches you how to save all that time and start creating. The author of the course is Dr. Ryan Ahmed, ph.D., MBA, and Mitchell Bouchard, B.Sc. Students in the reviews say mostly good things about the course. The most important thing is that the course teaches you to build models without coding. Some users even recommend it as the best introduction to AI for a beginner. On the other hand, the bad reviews complain that the course is too introductory or has too many explanations. Another area for improvement is that there are broken links in the course. A few participants made this complaint.

Modern AI with no coding Syllabus

• Course Introduction, key learning outcomes, and critical tips for success.
• AI in healthcare: disease detection with AI-powered Google Teachable Machine
• Emotion AI with AI-powered Google Teachable Machines
• AI for cardiovascular disease detection with data robots.
• AI in business with AWS autopilot
• AI for food recognition & explainable AI with data robot Even though this course eliminates the use of codes, it still teaches you to build capable AI in relevant business sectors.

4. The Beginner’s Guide to Artificial Intelligence (Udemy)

Rating: 4.7 Pricing: $9.99

Udemy has made this course, in partnership with Unity gaming, to teach the basics of AI in gaming. Especially the development of NPCs using C#. The course explains the role of artificial intelligence in gaming, using existing projects from Unity. It also involves applying navigation and decision-making systems in an NPC.

Dr. Penny De Byl teaches how to create unique behaviors for your game NPC in this course. At the end of this course, you should understand how AI applies to the gaming industry, and you should be able to use it yourself. AI creates AI-controlled cars and people, and Unity is spreading the knowledge of how they apply this technology. The reviews are good. Many students testify that the course took them from 0 to 100 in the knowledge of AI in games. Some students warn that you should only expect to learn rudimentary knowledge about AI, just the basics. On the other hand, the bad reviews complained that the course was not very challenging and that the codes used were simple. All in all, this is a good course for a beginner to take.

The Beginner’s Guide to AI Syllabus

• Introduction
• The Mathematics of AI
• The Physics of AI
• The A* Algorithm
• Waypoints and graphs
• Vehicles
• Navigation meshes
• Finite state meshes
• Autonomously moving agents
• Crowd simulation This course is valuable for less than $10 and is a good start for a beginner.

5. Machine Learning Fundamentals (edx)

Rating: 4.0 Pricing: $350

Understanding machine learning is an essential foundation for progression in AI. This course covers the introduction to machine learning, a good starting point for any beginner. Students learn how to develop algorithms and also the theory behind the algorithms. The course effectively covers the theory and practice behind building functioning machine learning systems. After this course, you should be able to build descriptive and predictive machine-learning models. The course has an open discussion forum for students to share ideas and improve learning.

The course is open to everyone except Iran, Cuba, and Ukraine. It is estimated to take ten weeks, but the schedule is flexible, so you can study it when you have the time. UC San Diego’s professor, Sanjoy Dasgupta is the lead tutor. Although Edx claims to have a free plan that offers full benefits, the free plan provides no certificate and does not even offer final exams. Past students left good testimony of how the course perfectly moves from basic to professional. The course also gives all the materials upfront to help students manage their time better. The main complaints were about feedback; there was no follow-up explanation if a student didn’t firmly grasp a topic. There is also no supervision in the discussion forum. This means that the students are without the help of a tutor.

Machine Learning Fundamentals Curriculum**

• Classification, regression, and conditional probability estimation
• Generative and discriminative models
• Linear models and extensions to nonlinearity using kernel methods
• Ensemble methods: boosting, bagging, random forests
• Representation learning: clustering, dimensionality reduction, autoencoders, deep nets The course seems pricey, but many past students testify that it’s worth every penny.

6. Deep Learning for Beginners (Simplilearn)

Rating: 4.6 Pricing: Free

A great way to learn AI because it deals with the basics of Deep Learning. It studies neural networks and their part in artificial intelligence. The course includes 7 hours of video-based lessons that can be accessed anytime over 90 days. The course is mainly for beginners interested in machine learning and its frameworks. However, Simplilearn advises that anyone who wants to learn Deep Learning should start with this course before moving on to advanced courses. Deep Learning is not naturally easy to learn, but this course simplifies the process, especially with detailed video explanations. In addition, the course covers the fundamentals of Deep Learning like; TensorFlow, frameworks, libraries, recurrent neural networks, etc. The reviews from past students are also encouraging. The course is engaging, covering all the fundamental aspects of Deep Learning. People who have taken the course testify that it is a good place for newbies to start.

Deep Learning for Beginners Syllabus

• Introduction to Deep Learning
• Neural Networks
• Deep learning libraries
• Tensorflow
• Data flow graph
• Use Case implementation using Tensorflow
• Tensorflow object detection
• Deep Learning frameworks
• Recurrent Neural Networks
• LSTMs
• Deep Learning applications This course is free and requires basic knowledge of mathematics and statistics. It also engages students in projects relating to real-world scenarios.

7. Machine Learning (Simplilearn)

Rating: 4.5 Pricing: Free

This Simplilearn course is centered around the basics of machine learning. Its aim is to give beginners a solid foundation in machine learning and skills that make them work-ready. It is an ideal course if you are looking to kickstart your AI career. The course offers real-world practicals, allowing you to provide machine-learning solutions to real business problems. Simplilearn also offers a very flexible learning plan, allowing you to take 7 hours of class within 90 days. In addition, unlike other free class plans, Simplilearn presents you with a certificate at the end of the course. Past students testify that the course was insightful on machine learning and gave clear examples. Many students even move on to recommend it to others.

Machine Learning Syllabus

• Introduction to Machine learning
• Supervised learning regression and classification
• Decision trees and random forest
• Unsupervised Learning
• Time series modeling
• Ensemble learning
• Recommender Systems
• Level up sessions This course offers a lot of value for its free price tag, explaining the basics of machine learning with quality practice sessions. It is a great online course to learn the basics you need to upskill in machine learning.

Conclusion

The journey from amateur to professional in AI can be a long one. To some people, it’s the most arduous journey one can take. But with consistency and persistence, you will be done in no time. Remember that starting a career in tech does not have to do with your educational degree or job specialization. AI is becoming more relevant every day. It is important that we learn skills that help us take advantage of the imminent demand. These 7 top courses to learn AI for beginners are very good starting points for anyone looking to have a solid foundation in AI. Also, you should familiarize yourself with the industry by subscribing to this AI newsletter to stay updated with new AI Innovations and for more beginner tips. If you have taken any of the courses mentioned above, reach us through any of the channels below and let us know how your experience was.

Also, see our article: Best Ways for Kids to Learn Artificial Intelligence