Does learning Artificial Intelligence require coding? Can a non-technical person learn AI?

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There are 3 ways to learn Artificial Intelligence depending on your objective.

1. AI Scientist 

Artificial Intelligence is all about making models. AI scientists and researchers make these models. If you want to do research and become an AI scientist, you need to know Python, Mathematics and Statistics.

When it comes to Mathematics, you need to know Probability, Functions, Matrix multiplication, polynomial equations, partial differentiation etc.

This is a traditional approach and it will prepare you for a great career in AI. You need to spend a dedicated time of a minimum 2 years in order to learn the basics and master all the concepts

In case you are not aware, many people started their AI learning journey by taking this very famous Andrew NG’s course – https://www.coursera.org/specializations/machine-learning-introduction

This is my journey of learning AI in 4 months for free – https://www.aimletc.com/how-i-learned-ai/

2. AI product manager/ AI application developer/ AI DevOps specialist, Head of AI, etc.

The world of AI has shifted from building models to using models. 

There are many reasons behind these

1. AI models have become more complex
2. Building AI models now requires a lot of computational power and hence money. For example –  Building a model like ChatGPT now costs tens of millions of dollars
3. Rise in open-source community – Many state-of-the-art models are available to open-source communities 

So, when you do not want to build models and simply use them for your own use case then the traditional approach of learning AI becomes irrelevant. 

In this case, you are not required to know Maths, Statistics and many other things. 

However, in this case, you still need to know the coding language and Python is the most popular language for using AI models. 

In terms of time, you do not need to spend 6 months to 2 years to learn AI like AI Scientists do. 

You need to learn the basics and can then quickly come to the latest in AI like Large Language Models, Generative AI etc. 

Check out this course for Senior tech professionals (15+ years of experience) – https://www.aimletc.com/online-instructor-led-ai-llm-coaching-for-it-technical-professionals/

3. Chief AI Officer/ AI Strategy Director/ AI Transformation Leader/ AI Project Manager, etc.

As AI is impacting almost every industry and business then even senior functional executives who do not know coding also want to learn AI.

The objective behind learning AI is to understand the capabilities of AI, how to implement AI, how to build an AI team, the costs involved, etc.

For this objective, you can learn AI without knowing how to code as well. You need to understand AI as a technology from a functional perspective.

At the same time, you need to understand what coding can do so that you understand all the possibilities in your business or in your client’s business.

The pre-requisite here is an open mind and enthusiasm to learn a new technology.

The right method would be not to spend 6 months to 2 years and not try to do more hands-on.

Check out this AI course without coding – https://www.aimletc.com/online-ai-llm-coaching-for-senior-working-professionals/

Conclusion

Though AI progress comes from building better, smaller, and faster models, AI is no longer about building models. 

For other IT folks, it is about building applications using these models and for functional professionals and entrepreneurs, it is about solving problems using the AI model’s functionalities

So, as per your objective, you should tailor your approach to learning AI