LinkedIn is helping employees upskill with free AI courses

As employees look to incorporate and embrace AI as part of their daily workflow, LinkedIn is offering hundreds of upskilling opportunities — and at no cost.

Four in five people say they want to learn more about how to use AI in their profession, according to a recent survey from LinkedIn. As a result, the platform is making 250 AI courses — two thirds of which are generative AI-related — free to members through its educational resource LinkedIn Learning to help organizations help their employees.

"We knew professionals were interested in AI skills, but it's surprising to see just how high the learner demand is," said Dan Brodnitz, head of content strategy at LinkedIn Learning Global in an email. "We've seen our courses on Generative AI skyrocket in popularity. In fact, we've seen a fivefold increase year-over-year in the number of learners engaging with AI content."   

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Although just 27% of the talent professionals surveyed by LinkedIn say that they're using or experimenting with generative AI, it's going to be key for employees and job seekers looking to further their careers. The data revealed that the skills required to do the average job globally have been projected to change by 51% by 2030, and the rise of generative AI is expected to accelerate this change to 68%. As a result, the number of recruiters who added AI skills to their profiles jumped 14% last year.

"When people think about learning, we often think of someone reskilling into a completely different field through years of training," Brodnitz said. "But there's also tons of power in using online learning to fill specific, high-value skills, like [learning] how to use GAI to be better at your role. This kind of focused upskilling is sometimes overlooked, but filling these skill gaps can be exactly what gets you that next promotion."

LinkedIn's courses span seven languages to help people across industries, roles and levels navigate the resource. The platform also took proficiency into consideration and made the courses easy to understand, whether the user is looking to build general fluency in employees' knowledge of generative AI, or use the tool to upskill engineers to maintain and train AI models. 

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"As skills needed for jobs change, it's critical for employees to invest in their own skill building, and be vocal about their own career development," said Jill Raines, director of product management at LinkedIn in an email. 

LinkedIn's free AI courses, which will be available to independent users and organizations until April 5 2024, are split up by various chapters so learners can preview the material generally between 30 minutes to one hour. 

"Jobs are changing on us, even if we're not changing jobs," Brodnitz said. "Talent leaders have an enormous role to play in helping people develop the skills they need to keep pace with this change and thrive in the AI era."