Job postings for generative AI skills rose 1,848% in 2023, and more than 385,000 postings for AI roles ran that year, according to a labour-market analysis reported by IEEE Spectrum. Government forecasters expect AI engineering roles in the US to grow 23% by 2030, and machine-learning engineering roles by as much as 22%, an outlook that comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

A laptop open on a wooden desk beside a notebook, a mug, and a pair of hands typing.
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Most of the free AI courses now on offer take under half an hour at a desk like this one.Licence: CC0

There are not enough trained engineers to meet that demand, so companies cannot hire their way out of the gap. Alexander Sukharevsky, a senior partner at McKinsey, says reskilling existing staff is the most common way companies find AI talent, and that close to half the firms McKinsey surveyed take that route.

Why retraining can beat a course bought off the shelf

The educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom found that students taught one-on-one outperformed 98% of those taught in a classroom, a gap researchers still call the two-sigma problem. The IEEE Spectrum piece argues that one-on-one tutoring beats the video-and-quiz model most corporate programmes use. CodeSignal’s Talent Science team has mapped the core skills needed for two of the roles companies are short of: machine-learning engineering and natural-language-processing engineering.

Where to start without an employer’s programme

LinkedIn Learning, running since 1995 as Lynda.com, now carries more than 1,500 AI courses and costs $39.99 a month after a free trial, unless an employer or school already grants access. A company representative told ZDNET that the platform has awarded nearly 500,000 professional certificates in the past two and a half years, and that generative AI is one of its most requested subjects.

ZDNET’s own reviewer, who tried the courses before recommending them, took the two-hour Machine Learning with Python: Foundations course, taught by Professor Frederick Nwanganga, and later completed Harvard’s CS50 computer science course entirely online. LinkedIn Learning also runs role-specific series, among them ChatGPT Tips for the Help Desk and Building Career Agility and Resilience in the Age of AI.

A two-hour course will not turn an employee into an AI engineer.