Next Generation of AI Workers Are Reporting to Boot Camps
Software companies seeking a way to train new customers, established education players seeking to tap a new market, and startups seeing an opportunity all in position
By John P. Desmond, Editor, AI Trends
AI boot camps have become popular as a way to deliver AI training by a range of entities, including: companies offering AI products and services as a way to grow their customer base; established education institutions responding to market demand; and startups seeing an opportunity to cash in on burgeoning interest in AI.
Here is a review of the AI boot camp landscape, starting with an example that may demonstrate how widespread is this AI training trend.
Lily Cheng was a product design director at Big Health, a startup in San Francisco focused on delivering mental health services digitally, who decided to go back to school for training in generative AI. She took courses from Google, Coursera, Stanford and the online platform Maven Learning.
“I’ve been a life-long learner,” stated Cheng, who is a Stanford grad, in a recent account from CNBC. “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.” She is now an advisor for Levl, a Palo Alto-based network intelligence company.
Salesforce, the cloud software company, recently added a Gen AI course to its free online platform Trailhead, which has trained six million people since 2014. More than 700,000 badges for completing AI-specific skills were completed in the second half of 2023, according to the company.
Within Salesforce, an AI reeducation boot camp is taking place. “We’re retraining every single person in recruiting, sales, finance, sales and customer support and evangelizing for them to become AI experts,” stated Clara Shih, who was recently promoted to CEO of Salesforce AI. She is focused on getting employees and customers up the learning curve on AI security risks, productivity gains and data management. Salesforce has 1,400 machine learning engineers and data scientists, but Shih stated, “It’s like the 90s with the internet, you don’t just go out and hire all new people.”
Universities Stepping Up AI Training Offerings
Top universities are stepping into the AI training breach. MIT’s Sloan School has added generative AI to its executive education online courses. Six-week classes at six to eight hours per week cost $3,200; nearly 25,000 professionals had completed the course by year-end 2023. One of them was Richard Banks, a UK-based technology consultant who after the course landed a position as chief strategy officer of Virtus Health, a medical technology company based in Sydney. He now advises 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 stated.
Corporate boards are feeling pressure to move quickly on AI, while their companies may not be ready. In an AI readiness survey of 8,161 business leaders conducted by Cisco Systems last year, 97 percent felt pressure to “urgently deploy” AI technologies. They also believed AI would have a significant impact on their operations, and two-thirds reported not being fully prepared for the new era, according to the CNBC account.
Generationally, Gen Zs and millennials are the most optimistic that GenAI can help their career progression. But a LinkedIn survey found that 44 percent globally and 57 percent in the US reported their organizations do not have policy guidelines or training for how to use the new tools at work.
At the executive level, a chief AI officer who can oversee the transformation to AI and help with the needed hires is in demand. “It’s critically important when building your AI team to get an anchor hire who is a talent magnet and can attract other people,” stated Fawad Bajwa, a managing director and partner at the executive recruiting firm Russell Reynolds Associates. He co-leads the firm’s AI, analytics & data practice globally.
Corporate boards are in search of AI experts who can help decide how and when to scale genAI strategies for competitive advantage, while balancing the risks and discerning hype from reality. “We are in the first inning of a nine-inning game,” stated McKinsey senior partner Alex Singla, who co-leads the firm’s AI business, QuantumBlack.
Company-Specific AI Bootcamps Seen as ‘Lead Generation’
Companies with AI products and services to sell are also beginning to offer immersive AI boot camps that help meet the demand for AI training, and–guess what–train prospective customers in their suite of software products. “The goal of these boot camps is to help customers identify use cases for artificial intelligence as the technology becomes more of a focal point in IT budgets,” stated the authors of a recent account in The Motley Fool.
Two companies executing on the model are Palantir, specializing in big data analytics, and Snowflake, a cloud data storage company and close partner of Palantir. Snowflake announced in December that it would be hosting its own boot camps geared toward enterprises analyzing how large language models can be integrated into their operations. “More importantly, the company is teaching these prospective clients how generative AI can be used on Snowflake’s own platform,” stated the author, Adam Spatacco, adding, “Just like with Palantir, these boot camps are meant to serve as a source of lead generation.” They also help the company retain customers, a crucial performance factor.
Snowflake hosted 140 boot camps in November, the company reported on an earnings call. For new and existing customers, the boot camps “are not only creating demand but spurring faster customer adoption,” the author stated. He added, “By capturing customers earlier in their digital transformation journey, Snowflake has the opportunity to expand these client relationships over time.”
High school and even middle school students have an opportunity to learn about AI through a program of Inspirit AI, whose AI Scholars program is designed to prepare students for AI-based learning at the college level and perhaps a future career in AI or tech. The program was developed and is taught by Stanford and MIT alumni and graduate students.
The company has over 400 instructors and has enrolled students from over 2,300 high schools in 70 countries. So far, 150 of students trained by the company have been accepted into Ivy League institutions. Proficiency in algebra is a suggested requirement; the first topic in the Intro to AI course is linear regression, followed by machine learning foundations.
A student spotlight on the Inspirit website describes the experience of Kalissa G. when she was a high school student. She had been interested in STEM courses, had participated on the robotics team, and completed as many computer science courses as possible in middle and high school. When she learned of the InSpirit program from an AI speaker series at her high school in the fall of her senior year, she decided to participate. She was interested in the program’s focus on AI and in the intersection of technology and ethics.
Kalissa had been passionate about social impact since a young age, and had written about the integration of her school in Atlanta, so she was interested in applying technology toward real-world problems. “I feel like computer science is similar to writing in terms of creating something new, and both are essentially learning different languages,” she stated.
Pursuing her interest in the ethics of AI, Kalissa worked on a project through InSpirit on the effects of bias in algorithms on the justice system. The students learned how using a more representative dataset can result in more fair results. “These are the issues that are going to be impacting us throughout our lifetime, so I wanted to learn more,” she stated.
Kalissa is now enrolled at Stanford, pursuing the social and economic impact of AI.
Read the source articles and information from CNBC, in The Motley Fool and on a student spotlight on the website of Inspirit AI.