DO YOU REALLY NEED THAT AI COURSE?
As AI learning options multiply, mid-career professionals are being sold knowledge, structure, credibility and career security as though they were the same thing. While some courses offer real value, others may offer little more.
By Ronise Nepomuceno.
If you are a mid-career professional on LinkedIn, you might have seen that almost every day someone in your network announces the successful completion of an AI-related online course, along with a growing collection of certificates in Generative AI, AI Strategy, Machine Learning, Responsible AI and prompt engineering.
Without even needing to search for AI courses, your feeds keep rolling with algorithmic suggestions and adverts, ranging from free programmes to bank-breaking enrolments costing thousands. You can study for two hours or six months. You can even take a Master's on the subject. Wherever you are in the world, you can learn from prestigious universities, technology companies, training businesses, consultants and people whose principal evidence of expertise appears to be that they teach courses about AI.
The abundance of choice is so overwhelming that it can paralyse your decision. To complicate things further, not every course is equally transparent about who designed it, who teaches it, how recently it was updated, or what kind of competence it actually develops. Some may be carefully built by experienced practitioners. Others may be little more than repackaged public information, lightly edited slides, or content assembled quickly to meet demand. This is not new to AI.
