From Microsoft to MIT MBA, an AI boot camp for every worker, executive

Lily Cheng, a product design director at Silicon Valley-based health tech company Big Health is an expert at the intersection of technology and behavioral change. Now, Cheng is among the many professionals going back to school for generative AI skills building, taking courses from Google, Coursera, Stanford and online platform Maven Learning.

“I’ve been a life-long learner,” said Cheng, a former design lead at Fitbit and a Stanford grad. “One of the reasons I’m learning about GenAI is that it is transformative for tech and jobs in the future. It’s critical, must-know knowledge and if you don’t keep up, you become obsolete in tech cycles that are moving fast.” 

As new Gen AI-powered technologies keep coming and demand for skills change rapidly, workforce and professional training is on the rise. Training programs among big tech players, university executive education from Stanford, MIT, Harvard and others, and online tech education companies such as Maven, Udacity and Udemy are helping to fill the gap.

Salesforce recently added a Gen AI component to its free online learning platform Trailhead, which has trained upwards of 6 million people since 2014. Designed to be fun, Trailhead grants various badges – a total of 1600 – to Trailblazers and Rangers who complete trails or modules for skills. More than 700,000 badges for AI-specific skills have been earned since June, according to Ann Weeby, Salesforce senior vice president of Trailhead and Learning Operations.

The AI reeducation boot camp is taking place within the company as swiftly as anywhere. “We’re retraining every single person in recruiting, sales, finance, sales and customer support and evangelizing for them to become AI experts,” said Clara Shih, recently promoted to CEO, Salesforce AI.

In her new chief AI role, Shih strives to get employees and customers up to speed on safety and security risks, talent training, productivity gains and data management. While Salesforce has an expanding team of 1,400 machine learning engineers and data scientists, Shih said, “It’s like the 90’s with the internet. You didn’t just go out and hire all new people.”

The AI MBA

A niche of specialized instructors and recruiters is also branching out from big tech to meet the AI talent needs. Marily Nika, a former AI product manager at Meta and Google, started an AI boot camp with a mixture of online videos, case studies, projects and live lectures through Maven. A Stanford MBA and Imperial College of London Ph.D. holder, her boot camp charges $500 for a three-week course and $2,000 for 12 weeks, and has taught 1,500 students, most of them using their company budget, she said.

Leading universities are helping to fill the information void. The MIT Sloan business school has updated its executive education online courses with generative AI, led by professor of management and AI expert Thomas Malone. Classes are taught online for six weeks, 6-8 hours per week. The lessons costs $3200, and nearly 25,000 business professionals have completed the coursework, according to IT senior lecturer Paul McDonagh-Smith, who leads digital programs within the school’s executive education.

UK-based business and technology consultant Richard Banks took MIT’s AI course, which led to his work on a European project and promotion to chief strategy officer at Sydney-based medtech company Virtus Health. Since starting his own consulting firm this December, he’s advising others on AI strategies and technologies.  

“While the course didn’t turn me into a fully-fledged AI developer, it did make me a very useful business executive who could understand how new AI technologies might work and speak some of the language,” Banks said.  

Taking a proactive approach, in October, Northstar Travel Group — a New Jersey-based publishing, data and events company best known for its Travel Weekly title — hired Nino Tasca, a 10-year Google veteran leading a speech recognition team, as chief products officer. Tasca said he sees an opportunity to build upon the company’s proprietary data to finetune models and enhance current products in the travel sector. His goal is to guide Northstar into “using AI to leapfrog what we can do in the future.”

Northstar was already progressive, having formed a 15-member, internal committee last August to share latest AI research and trade info on what’s working and not. “It is becoming apparent that GenAI is a game-changer, the biggest disruptor since the iPhone,” said Janine Bavoso, Northstar’s chief people officer, who sees the workforce gaining efficiencies with use of advanced AI. “We are taking a very open but cautious approach, and how to leverage this tech to work best with our organization while understanding the risks and pitfalls.”

Boardrooms are feeling the pressure

Cisco Systems’ first AI readiness survey this year of 8,161 business leaders globally found that nearly all (97%) are being pressured to urgently deploy AI-powered technologies and believe AI will have a significant impact on their operations, yet more than two-thirds are not fully prepared for this new era. Its Networking Academy for IT skills is being expanded to GenAI courses, said Guy Diedrich, senior vice president and global innovation officer.

With the widespread potential for jobs being both disrupted and augmented by GenAI, skill requirements will go through significant changes in the years ahead. Some of the most impacted occupations are for higher-paid, higher-educated professionals with advanced skills and expertise. Notably, Gen Zs and millennials are most optimistic about how GenAI can help them progress in their careers, yet LinkedIn finds that 44% globally and 57% in the U.S. say their organizations don’t have policy guidelines or training for how to use these new tools at work.   

The impact of generative AI is already leading to a shuffle in more senior corporate roles. Besides the CAIO (chief AI officer), there’s the AI ethicist to oversee security and accuracy risks. The broader AI education being offered by Salesforce includes an AI certificate that can validate proficiency in understanding ethical use of AI within customer relationship management, wrapping in data and privacy controls, and issues with bias, fairness and transparency. Moreover, chief data and analytics officer roles are being elevated, reporting to corporate leadership or to the chief technology officer.

The chief AI officer overseeing this transformation and new hires “is similar to the boon of chief digital officers who led the 2010s digital transformation,” said Fawad Bajwa, a managing director and partner at executive recruiting firm Russell Reynolds Associates who co-leads its AI, analytics & data practice globally. “It’s critically important when building your AI team to get an anchor hire who is a talent magnet and can attract other people,” he said.

Among corporate boards, AI experts are becoming far more important and specialists are being favored over general managers from the tech industry, Bajwa said. Social media company Snap recently brought in two AI specialists to join its advisory board – Meeri Haataja, CEO of Finland-based AI governance startup Saidot, and Patrick K. Lin, a U.S.-based lawyer and author of “Machine See, Machine Do.”

For business leaders, new responsibilities extend to how and when to scale GenAI strategies for competitive advantage while balancing the risks and distinguishing between hype and reality, said senior partner Alex Singla, who co-leads McKinsey’s AI business, QuantumBlack. “We are in the first inning of a nine-inning game,” he said.

Concerns about a new digital divide

The introductory coursework from tech giants is broadly free, and typically use their cloud computing, search and email services in demos, while more advanced technical courses charge a fee. There is also an effort underway to get ahead of concerns that AI knowledge and skillsets will extend the digital divide in the workforce.

At Microsoft, generative AI coursework has taken off faster than any of its IT courses, with 1.5 million learners. That’s occurring as LinkedIn’s research among its online community shows that job postings mentioning GPT or ChatGPT have increased 21 times since November 2022. Job titles with machine learning and other AI terms have increased 12 percent from late last year to September 2023 while applications for AI job postings are up 11 percent globally, and by 19 percent in the U.S.  

Microsoft and LinkedIn together introduced a generative AI skills initiative this past June with online coursework, and a gen AI professional certificate. Naria Santa Lucia, general manager of digital inclusion and community engagement at Microsoft Philanthropies, said such training is free as part of a company charter to help reach underserved communities. The new program includes AI coaches on video teaching six courses from 20 minutes to more than an hour, in fundamentals including ethics and gen AI search strategies.

Monique Escamilla earned a UCLA degree in informatics and was hired as a product designer and researcher at ADP and later at digital analytics specialist Heap. Before its acquisition by Contentsquare, she left Heap and began taking generative AI classes. Now, she is considering starting her own business — a mobile lab for under-served communities to learn how to create and design using gen AI.     

In London, startup adviser and Cambridge computer science graduate Christina Chen runs a recruiting and training group, AI Talent First, that she started five years ago. Having placed 300 people in data science and machine learning, she’s currently focusing on placing minorities and women in AI roles, and charges companies for helping them build “top GenAI squads.”

Through AI Talent First, Aaron Sayeb, an Afghanistan refugee who earned a Ph.D. in astrophysics from the University of Florida, interned at Novartis in data science, and landed at Independence Blue Cross in Philadelphia more than a year ago as a machine learning researcher. With a team of six data scientists as well as software developers, their work in finetuning large language models is leading to streamlined insurance claims processes. “These kinds of skills are in high demand for organizations. They need to go this route,” he said. Sayeb, like other achievers, continues to take advanced AI courses to earn certificates and stay ahead of coming technological change, but while he says recruiters are occasionally calling, he intends to stay put for now.