AI may be threatening to take away our jobs - but on the other hand it opens up plenty of opportunities for those with the right skills. A whole raft of Udacity Artificial Intelligence Nanodegree programs restart next week to help you become career-ready in AI.

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As far as I'm concerned the flagship Udacity Nanodegree program is Artificial Intelligence Nanodegree, taught by Peter Norvig, Sebastian Thrun and Thad Starner. Nikos Vaggalis reported on it when it was originally launched in 2016 as a two-trimester program, see  Artificial Intelligence Engineer Nanodegree From Udacity, but two years later, when Udacity announced its School of AI, the content was restructured and the time commitment was reduced to a 3-month program assuming 12-15hrs/week during which students: 

Learn to write programs using the foundational AI algorithms powering everything from NASA’s Mars Rover to DeepMind’s AlphaGo Zero. This program will teach you classical AI algorithms applied to common problem types. You’ll master Bayes Networks and Hidden Markov Models, and more.

This description still holds true and the expanded overview is:

This program will teach learners how to become a better artificial intelligence or machine learning engineer by teaching them classical AI algorithms applied to common problem types. They will complete projects and exercises incorporating search, optimization, planning, and probabilistic graphical models which have been used in artificial intelligence applications for automation, logistics, operations research, and more. 

Given that this is at Advanced Level and has as a pre-requisite knowledge of Python many students opt first to complete AI Programming with Python, which is billed at the top rated of the AI courses Udacity has on offer with students awarding it 4.7 out of 5, based on 1629 reviews. This is a 3-month program at Beginner Level that introduces the programming tools you need for AI - not only Python but also NumPy and PyTorch. It also covers the math you'll need - calculus and linear algebra - and the key techniques of neural networks - gradient descent and backpropagation.

The options for Nanodegrees at Intermediate Level include Deep Learning which is a 4-month program that covers cutting-edge topics such as neural, convolutional, recurrent neural, and generative adversarial networks and has projects in Keras and NumPy, in addition to TensorFlow. This is flagged as "New" in the list of programs starting soon from the school of AI indicating that it has new content.

Moving on to Advanced Level, the catalog lists Natural Language Processing, a 3-month Nanodegree program offered in collaboration with Amazon Alexa and IBM Watson which teaches you the skills to get computers to understand, process, and manipulate human language, and Computer Vision, also a 3-month Nanodegree program in which you'll learn cutting-edge computer vision and deep learning techniques, from basic image processing, to building and customizing convolutions neural networks. Students apply these concepts to vision tasks such as automatic image captioning and object tracking to build a  portfolio of computer vision projects including one in which deep learning techniques are used to program a convolutions neural network to recognize facial keypoints. This really is cutting edge AI.

The latest addition to the ever-expanding range of options is Ethical AI, a new 1-month course at Intermediate Level taught by Ria Cheruvu whose title at Intel is AI Ethics Lead Architect with responsibility for promoting trustworthy AI. It is intended for students who have a grounding in AI and ML and, according to the syllabus:

In this course, learners will begin to approach and apply ethical AI. Coursework will enable practitioners to design and build models with enhanced fairness and limited bias to avoid unforeseen consequences. Additionally, learners will connect ethical AI concepts to critical issues in privacy, governance, transparency, and security. They’ll begin with acquiring ethical AI literacy skills that will enable them to engage in more meaningful discussions across AI disciplines and apply ethical AI principles to their organization. Learners will then implement technical measures toward bias, fairness, and explainability to help ensure an ethical future for all.

Given the increasing concern about avoiding bias and prejudice when deploying AI algorithms this course seems well worth considering. Like the Nanodegree programs included in this article it starts on March 29 and enrollment is open now. 

More Information

Artificial Intelligence Engineer Nanodegree

AI Programming with Python Nanodegree

Deep Learning Nanodegree 

Natural Language Processing Nanodegree

Foundations of Computer Vision Nanodegree 

Ethical AI

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