How LinkedIn's Most Popular AI Courses Can Shape Your Organization's Upskilling Strategy

By now, we’ve all heard the chatter around artificial intelligence: AI. Generative AI. ChatGPT. There are 33x as many LinkedIn posts mentioning topics like generative AI and GPT than there were one year ago. 

While the uptick in AI usage requires more technical skills, such as prompt engineering, it will also amplify the need for employees to hone their uniquely human skills, like critical thinking and teamwork. “We are in the early days of a world of work that is more human than before,” says LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky in a recent post, “giving us the chance to do more fulfilling work and to do that work more easily and effectively with others.”

As AI enters the mainstream at work, many L&D pros are working to efficiently and effectively upskill their employees to use this business-critical technology in their day-to-day work. And employees are eager to learn AI skills to advance their careers: LinkedIn data shows a 65% increase in learning hours for the top 100 AI/GAI courses from 2022 to 2023.

Below are LinkedIn’s 10 AI courses that learners around the world have taken the most in 2023, as well as five takeaways to guide your organization’s AI upskilling strategies. 

1. How to Research and Write Using Generative AI Tools, Dave Birss
2. What is Generative AI?, Pinar Seyhan Demirdag
3. Generative AI for Business Leaders, Tomer Cohen
4. Nano Tips for Using ChatGPT for Business, Rachel Woods
5. Machine Learning with Python: Foundations, Frederick Nwanganga
6. Get Ready for Generative AI, Ashley Kennedy
7. Introduction to Prompt Engineering for Generative AI, Ronnie Sheer
8. Python Data Structures and Algorithms, Robin Andrews
9. Prompt Engineering: How to Talk to the AIs, Xavier Amatriain
10. GPT-4: The New GPT Release and What You Need to Know, Jonathan Fernandes

These courses are available for everyone to access for free until July 1, 2024. They offer a starting point to help you develop your own AI skills and to upskill your employees. These courses also signal what’s coming. As you prepare for this new era at work, use the five takeaways below to guide your talent development strategies. 

1. AI upskilling empowers more than hard skills — it also drives career growth

AI is changing how everyone does their job — not just in tech, but across all roles and industries. The skills required for many jobs have changed by 25% since 2015, with that number expected to reach at least 65% by 2030, according to the recent LinkedIn report AI at Work, due to the proliferation of new AI tools and applications. 

In this environment, employees are concerned about staying relevant. They want to grow their skills but are relying on talent leaders for guidance on how to use AI at work. And it’s up to L&D leaders to help their employees meet this moment and harness new AI skills to grow their careers. 

As Dave Birss, instructor of the No. 1 most popular course on the list, explains, learning to work with AI isn’t just a skill, it’s a launchpad for career growth. 

“It’s the people who understand how to collaborate with AI that will have a real advantage over the next few years,” Dave says in How to Research and Write Using Generative AI Tools. “When employees fully grasp this, they will be in a strong position to both improve how they do their job today and advance their career moving forward.”

2. Help every employee understand what AI is — and what it’s not

L&D pros play a vital role to guide employees’ AI learning journeys at work. The most important thing for employees to understand is that AI cannot do their job for them. It’s a tool to help them do the parts of their jobs that they’re good at and enjoy. Whether they’re writing code or writing a speech, employees must bring their own expertise and judgment to the process to get the most useful results.

As Tomer Cohen, LinkedIn’s chief product officer and the instructor for Generative AI for Business Leaders (No. 3 on our list), said in a recent post: “One of the most powerful ways to think of AI is as your copilot, your incredibly capable assistant, constantly at your side to help you excel at your task at hand and in your career.”

Helping employees figure out how to collaborate with AI will help drive better outcomes — from higher quality work to quicker skills building. When asked what changes they value most, people surveyed for Microsoft’s 2023 Work Trend Index Annual Report envision producing high-quality work in half the time (33%), being able to understand the most valuable ways to spend their time (26%) and energy (25%), and — learning leaders take note — being able to learn a new skill twice as fast (30%).

3. Offer varied levels of AI learning opportunities to meet and engage employees where they are

The most popular courses reveal that some employees want baseline AI knowledge in courses like What is Generative AI? while others are looking to hone more advanced, technical AI skills relevant to their role or function in, say, marketing or human resources. Others may be looking to skill up in machine learning or Python.   

Since employees come to AI from different entry points and want to use AI in different ways, learning and upskilling programs must make space for people to learn across many levels of expertise for both current and future roles. 

Workforce futurist Dr. Terri Horton offers tips for how to meet employees at different starting points in her newly released LinkedIn learning course, Gen AI for HR.

She provides a three-step process for scaling generative AI knowledge across levels and departments:

• Assess employees’ awareness and knowledge of AI. Identify knowledge gaps and create a plan for building AI fluency at your organization. 

• Run a pilot program to help employees create use cases and incorporate AI into their day-to-day roles. Small programs help maximize benefits — and mitigate potential risks — of upskilling employees with AI. 

• Teach employees how to use AI in their specific job or function. Customer service reps can use AI for responding to customer queries or challenges; finance employees can use AI to analyze data and create summary narratives; and marketing employees can use AI to create content, summarize research, or do keyword analysis for SEO.

“Keeping pace with AI adoption,” Terri says, “will require employees to upskill and reskill continually — and HR will enable much of this learning. However, employees are often resistant to change, and some may be apprehensive about artificial intelligence. So, be authentic and transparent and make sure that the learning includes use cases that are relatable, resonant, and come alive for them.” 

4. AI impacts the C-suite — as learners and leaders

As AI makes its way into all areas of the business, it’s important that senior executives — and other aspiring leaders — begin their own journeys into the world of AI to understand its uses and implications. 

According to the LinkedIn report AI at Work, just over half (51%) of U.S. executives are excited about AI advancements, but do not yet know how they will leverage AI tools and skills. And business leaders are “2x more interested in using AI to increase productivity than to cut headcount,” according to Microsoft’s 2023 Work Trend Index Annual Report.

With this in mind, learning professionals must create ways to train leaders on how to use AI to be more efficient in their day-to-day work. Executives will also benefit from leadership training that tackles the bigger issues, including how to ensure responsible AI, that come with the arrival of new technology to the workplace.  

“Leaders must ensure that humans remain the sole decision-makers,” says Pinar Seyhan Demirdag in her course, What is Generative AI? “Ultimately, the goal is to strike a beautiful balance between leveraging the power of generative AI to enhance human creativity and imagination and optimizing production, while also maintaining human control and oversight over this advanced technology.”

5. L&D pros are uniquely positioned to help employees build business-critical AI skills

AI has already created a shift in how we work, with a recent McKinsey survey showing that 79% of respondents have had some exposure to generative AI and 22% are using it regularly in their own work. And as even more AI tools come into play in the coming years, learning and development teams are in a unique position to guide their organizations through change: They can help everyone keep pace and adapt, while also building a culture of continuous development around AI. 

As Frederick Nwanganga says in his course Machine Learning with Python: Foundations, “The skills you acquire in these courses should serve as a stepping stone to continue learning and exploring how to solve more complex problems.”

Think of AI as similar to onboarding any new tool: Explain the “why” behind it and share ways in which it can be used. You can also set an example by implementing AI for core L&D functions and sharing the benefits (and maybe even the roadblocks) of streamlining and simplifying your work. 

For example, learning pros are already harnessing AI to jump-start tasks such as identifying missing or underdeveloped skills on their teams so they can build targeted development programs. It also helps them create employee development plans that accommodate each learner’s progress and performance.

Final thoughts: Emphasize experimentation over mastery 

AI isn’t a skill you learn once and then you’re done. It’s a fast-moving field where everyone is learning as they go. 

“AI is reinventing the world of work,” says Dan Brodnitz, global head of content strategy at LinkedIn Learning. “It’s challenging employees to think about and build new skills, but also grow future-focused careers. L&D pros are at the center of this shift as they guide employees on this journey.”

If you haven’t started using AI yet, take some of the courses above to start learning how it can help you at work today. If you’re already using AI on a daily basis, keep experimenting. Employees and businesses are just beginning to scratch the surface of what’s possible. 

Insights provided by Jamila Smith-Dell. The top 10 most popular AI/GAI courses list is ranked based on the number of unique learners who have taken the course during calendar year 2023. The increase in learning hours stat compares the number of hours learners have spent taking a course in 2023 year-to-date to the number of learning hours for the equivalent time period in 2022 for the top 100 AI/GAI courses.