We live in the time of AI, and its power seems inescapable.
Just to list a few recent headlines about the impacts of AI on the business world: Lawyers are using the tech to (reportedly) boost productivity by 34% to 240% across six legal workflows, a huge 84% of software developers say they use or plan to use AI tools in their workflow (despite listing some trust issues), and AI investments are surging even while VC funds overall drop.
In other words, we can’t overthrow our robot rulers just yet. In the meantime, it might help to understand them a little better.
White collar workers everywhere have had a few years to pick up some AI skills, but if you’re a holdout, the good news is that you won’t have to invest very much energy into learning the basics.
Here, we’ve rounded up a wide range of online training courses. Some are just a few hours long, while others will take several months to complete. The only thing linking them all is that you can complete them in your own time, from anywhere with an internet connection, and all without paying a cent.
IBM: AI for Everyone – Master the Basics
⏰Length: 4-8 hours
It’s right there in the title: This one’s a great starter course for AI newbies who just need to understand the basics in order to upskill and keep their career on track.
This just in! View
the top business tech deals for 2025 👨💻
IBM’s long history in computing makes them a natural fit for designing and running this course, which walks its students through AI applications, use cases, and the definitions of AI concepts such as machine learning, deep learning, and neural networks.
It also discusses the ethics concerns behind AI bias and how the technology impacts broader society.
The four modules will only take a few days to work through, with no technical background required. It’s popular, too, with over a quarter of a million people enrolled at one point or another.
Head over to the edX platform to try out this free course today.
Codeacademy: Accessing OpenAI APIs from Python
⏰Length: 2 hours
Plenty of workers already have an understanding of how to communicate with a generative AI chatbot. If that’s you, perhaps you’re hoping to gain more of an edge in the competitive “knowing how to use AI” corner of the business world. This more specific course can do the trick.
Over the course of just a couple hours, Codeacademy will teach users how to navigate the OpenAI API — the building blocks that any developer can use to create a new AI-powered app.
This particular course shows users how to use the Python coding language to discover API key authentication, gain access to API endpoints, and model configurations, among other tasks.
If you have a little bit of coding knowledge (and plenty of other free online courses can help with that), this course will help you craft a custom AI app for your company or your entrepreneurial pursuits. If you already have a vision for an app, you might be able to have a working beta turned out by the weekend.
Check out the course and get started over on Codeacademy here.
Davidson & Galileo: Intro to AI for Digital Marketing
⏰Length: 9-15 hours
Marketing and AI have an up-and-down relationship: On the one hand, 77% of Chief Marketing Officers have already adopted genAI for at least some creative development tasks, according to one study. However, another 27% of CMOs are limiting or completely avoiding the use of generative AI on their teams.
If you’re working under one of those 77% that are into the concept however, you might want this intro to digital marketing with AI. The course will take you through real-life applications and the key factors for successfully integrating AI with marketing strategies, along with a discussion of the risks and challenges that have led some CMOs to turn away from the idea.
Once you’re through with the course, you’ll even emerge with “advanced prompt engineering techniques for optimizing AI-generated content for specific marketing objectives.”
Offered through an international collaboration between Guatemala City’s Galileo University and North Carolina’s Davidson College, this course is available to all. It’s a great fit for a busy worker, too, since it should take you about 3 weeks to complete, with about 3-5 hours per week.
Check out the course on edX over here.
Stanford: Machine Learning Specialization
⏰Length: 80 hours
At a whopping 80 hours of commitment required, this is our longest course recommendation in this guide. In fact, it’s technically a three course series: The modules include “Supervised Machine Learning: Regression and Classification,” “Advanced Learning Algorithms,” and “Unsupervised Learning, Recommenders, Reinforcement Learning.”
Not only will you learn how machine learning works, but you’ll gain the “techniques to build real-world AI applications,” thanks to this collaboration between DeepLearning.AI and Stanford Online.
Best of all, your instructor is Andrew Ng, a top AI guru who cofounded and ran Google Brain, among many other AI-related accolades.
Be warned: The course is listed as “Beginner level,” but that means you’ll be expected to have a little coding knowledge before you start. If it’s for you, head over to Coursera and get started today.
UMD: Digital Marketing Analytics – Tools and Techniques
⏰Length: 12-20 hours
This course isn’t solely dedicated to AI. Instead, you’ll superpower your digital marketing abilities with a whole host of tools for data analysis within the field. AI and big data applications can be included with and bundled into SEO and paid search strategies, web analytics, and online testing.
It’s another reminder that AI tools aren’t great by themselves. Only when used intelligently and combined with tried-and-true strategies can you actually glean a little extra productivity from them. Here’s how the course intro explains it:
“Businesses today have access to an increasingly large amount of detailed customer data, and this influx of “big data” is only going to continue. […] Using real-world applications from various industries, this course will help you understand the tools and strategies used to make data-driven decisions that you can put to use in your own company or business.”
Available as part of Maryland Smith’s Digital Marketing Professional Certificate, this course can be audited online here, and will just take four weeks to complete with just three to five hours per week.
Keeping Up With AI Advancement
Perhaps you’re a worker just hoping to retain your job as the US economy drifts closer towards a recession. If so, hopefully the selection of online courses above can do the trick.
If you own or manage your own company, however, and want to make sure you’re not missing out on AI-powered growth or cost-cutting, than maybe you’d prefer taking a look at our guide (and free template) for creating your own AI business policy.
Other guides worth checking out include our walkthrough on how to best spot AI cyber attacks, or how to stop ChatGPT from training on your data.
We’ve also rounded up other free AI training courses in the past, so check our archives for even more suggestions.
