Learning Artificial Intelligence — Formal Education or Online Self-learning — Ph.D. or MOOC
This isn’t a time to relax and think what should you learn next? Build skills around what’s one of the most significant technologies of the coming decade –Artificial Intelligence. Despite of recent growth in interest, AI is a skill possessed by relatively few people.
Many of the roles, needed skills and business titles of the future are unknown to us. Talent is no longer same as it used be five years before. To prepare yourself for a future-ready career you will require new skills.
Why AI Is the Most Important Skill of the Next Decade?
This isn’t about some distant future of work we are talking here — change is already happening, and is accelerating. Competition for the right talent is fierce. Lifelong learning will become increasingly more important for the future workforce. Google CEO says that AI is ‘more profound than electricity or fire’.
A recent PwC report claims that Artificial intelligence (AI) can revolutionize the productivity and GDP potential of the global economy and total economic impact of AI in the period to 2030 will be up to $15.7 trillion
Artificial Intelligence is an enormous field. It consists of multiple disciplines and a variety of tools and platforms. There is no limit to what these AI techniques can be applied across numerous domains and industries.
AI is changing the world and you need to be a part of this global transformation.
Learning AI: Formal Education or Online Courses
AI can be applied to a lot of problems and different markets. In fact, it should be viewed of as a fundamentally new approach to every problem.
Now let’s examine what are your career objectives and interests. Do you crave to join research or academia and contribute or you prefer to build some great product/feature and launch it within next 18 months?
If you can set a routine to learn every day — for months, and enjoy making your hands dirty playing with various AI tools, then you can explore many online learning platform.
If you choose to immerse yourself into complex and interesting problems for a long long time, meet highly technical creative individuals and help shape the development of artificial intelligence, then you should consider Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence
To accomplish any form of learning, recognize your areas of strength and weakness, identify what environment suits your learning and what distracts you. Once done, you will be prepared to meet the answer to your most important career question — Formal AI education or online-learning? A Ph.D in Artificial Intelligence or MOOC
Online Courses: MOOC — Massive Open Online Course
The rapid growth of online education means that employees can re-skill themselves faster than ever before, and mostly for free. MOOC (massive open online course) is an economical alternative to formal education, can be accessed by anybody anywhere as long as they have an internet connection and a computer.
How to Start on MOOC?
To start, you could go for short introductory videos on YouTube and Udemy and later jump straight to Coursera.
Start with beginners, then intermediate, afterward moving on to the expert level courses. Make sure you complete all projects and assessments. After completing learning you need to build a few small projects, and gradually you will figure it out what you like most, what you can directly relate to your area of expertise.
Benefits of MOOC
Economic flexibility: You start with the free trial, pay monthly or based on course specialization or based your learning goal. Some MOOC platforms offer financial aid too.
Time flexibility: You can pick up your own timelines. If you have burst of time you can spend days and weeks learning AI, later take a break or just learn only on weekend/holidays.
Remote flexibility: Since you will be learning these course from remotely on your laptop, so it doesn’t matter where you are located. You could be at home, work and on holiday, Whenever you got 30 minutes spare attend a lecture or watch next video
Your way: Research and knowledge creation is something you all do all the time daily based on your routine.
Challenges:
Discipline and persistence are the key issues. Self-regulating the course progress and setting up learning targets isn’t something we are habitual of. It is troublesome to adjust the course trajectory with interactive participations from various different skill sets and cultures. Available learning objectives might not appeal to all participants fairly. With no individual student attention, some students can feel disconnected and unengaged in the course
Learning AI — Ph.D.
A Ph.D. from a top institution can never be “insignificant”. An atmosphere full of intellectually stimulating work with competent colleagues, working on positively help shaping the development of artificial intelligence.
Other than just AI functional subjects, a Ph.D. also prepare you for various other skills like communicating complex concepts, scientific publication, teaching and mentoring
Best Approach:
If you are already enjoying your career in a specific industry and that aren’t pure research based, going on to get a PhD isn’t an advantage and apparently isn’t worth the time and cost.
With so much hype around the field of artificial intelligence it is surprisingly easy to get it wrong. Real-world global problems, life-long learning, keeping yourself up-to-date with new research, widening your expertise to other realms — if this excites you then choose wisely on your Phd. decision and explore various institutions, their syllabus, research type availability — based on your budget, region and long-term career objectives.
Challenges
Today most of research is published in the open, creating opportunities for the outside students to establish the same level of expertise. With increasing number of quality MOOC specialized courses and certifications it is quicker to enter into industry and produce some real great work in the field of Artificial Intelligence — all without any formal education in Artificial Intelligence
Every Ph.D. is laborious, no matter what is the field. Just by doing Ph.D. you might not get a chance to create a significant direct real-world impact. You won’t either get super-rich doing AI research. You will be spending 4 to 6 years, great money and could be away from your home. It could be rough on mental health and could develop into a difficult psychological struggle.
What after Ph.D.?
Most institutions have industry partners and affiliates that you could explore for career advancements. A lot depends on
a) Quality and nature of your PhD thesis
b) Your letters of recommendation,
c) Your publications and
d) Your capability to “sell” your work
Future of Work and Career in AI?
A key step towards preparing individuals for the economy of the future is providing quality education and work opportunities. But unlike the past, things have changed — and if you plan a fixed future career goals and work towards it then you continue to get nothing. You need to flip through your mental rolodex, understand the future impact of disruptive technologies, analyze ever-evolving scenarios and build confidence in the willingness to innovate.
Organizations won’t protect jobs that are made redundant by technology automation, nobody can. Some companies recognize the responsibility towards their employee and nurture them for flexibility and re-skilling. Do not decline any such opportunity to learn future-ready skills. It won’t be pleasant because there is a lot of uncertainty about the future with people losing job due to automation.
This article barely touches the technological view of Artificial Intelligence, but the most best known attempts to understand AI are not about technology as AI is more than coding, tools, and algorithms. Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Cognitive Computing, Neural Networks, Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing (NLP), and Language Translation — there is no limit to what these AI techniques can be used across multiple domains and industries.
Learn Artificial Intelligence, act now, or forever play ‘catch up’
