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10 free Google Cloud courses to help you get to grips with generative AI

3 Aug 2023

For those who want to learn more about generative AI but are strapped for time and cash, Google Cloud is offering 10 one-day courses.

Google has been making a flurry of generative AI-related announcements over the past few months and it is now providing the public with opportunities to boost its own knowledge in this emerging technology by offering a range of short courses and learning paths.

The tech giant introduced 10 introductory to intermediate-level one-day courses a few months ago, but there are also other more advanced learning options for people with good knowledge of generative AI.

The 1o beginner courses provide a quick and inexpensive way to familiarise oneself with generative AI concepts and some of the tech Google has been releasing in the sector recently. You can display skills badges on your CV and LinkedIn once you’ve successfully completed each course. The first course in the series is an introduction to generative AI which breaks down the concept as if it is completely new to you, while in subsequent courses you’ll learn the fundamentals of large language models, image generation and an overview of what Google calls “responsible AI” or AI ethics.

Once you’ve completed these introductory courses, you can move on to some of the slightly more advanced ones. (Note that Google still labels these as introductory and intermediate but you will still need some knowledge of generative AI to grasp some of the concepts that these courses touch on.)

There is a synopsis course on encoder-decoder architecture, which is a machine learning architecture for sequence-to-sequence tasks such as machine translation, text summarisation and question answering.

For those interested in neural networks, there is a very short course called Attention Mechanism which offers a brief explanation of how the technique works to enable neural networks to focus on specific parts of an input sequence. You’ll learn how the attention mechanism works and how it can be used in machine learning.

The last course on the learning path is an introduction to Generative AI Studio, a product on Vertex AI, Google Cloud’s machine learning platform for training and deploying machine learning models and AI applications. Generative AI Studio enables Vertex AI users to prototype and customise generative AI models to use them in applications. This course is a demo of the product followed by a short test.

There are plenty of advanced, longer courses on generative AI and machine learning offered by Google, too. This self-paced Cloud Labs data science and machine learning course focuses on Vertex AI, showing learners how to develop their own TensorFlow model, for example.

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Blathnaid O’Dea
By Blathnaid O’Dea

Blathnaid O’Dea joined Silicon Republic in 2021 as Careers reporter, coming from a background in the Humanities. She likes people, pranking, pictures of puffins – and apparently alliteration.

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