Amazon's 'AI Ready' initiative to skill 2 million people in GenAI by 2025

Amazon on Thursday launched the 'AI Ready' initiative to provide free generative AI skill training to two million people by 2025.

To support professionals in the workplace, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is announcing eight new, free AI and generative AI courses which are open to anyone and aligned to in-demand jobs.

These courses augment more than 80 free and low-cost AI and generative AI courses and resources provided through AWS.

Amazon also launched AWS Generative AI Scholarship and collaboration with Code.org to help underrepresented and underserved students gain access to next-generation tech education.

Through the AWS Generative AI Scholarship, AWS will provide Udacity scholarships, valued at more than $12 million, to more than 50,000 high school and university students from underserved and underrepresented communities globally.

A new AWS study found strong demand for AI talent and the potential for workers with AI skills to earn up to 47 per cent more in salaries.

“Looking ahead, AI will only become more integral to the way business is done, with 93 per cent of businesses expecting they will be using AI solutions across their organization in the next five years,” the study noted.

Amazon's new AI Ready commitment is in addition to AWS's commitment to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to provide free cloud computing skills training to 29 million people by 2025, which has already trained more than 21 million people.