"AI Ready" initiative: Amazon aims to train two million people in AI for free by 2025

Amazon announced AI Ready, an initiative to provide free AI training to two million people worldwide by 2025.

The program includes three new projects: eight free courses on AI and generative AI, an AWS Generative AI Fellowship for more than 50,000 students, and a collaboration with Code.org to introduce students to generative AI.

Free AI courses for different skill levels

Courses offered through AWS Educate and AWS Skill Builder range from introductory to advanced and are designed for both business leaders and technical professionals.

In addition, Amazon is launching the AWS Generative AI Fellowship, endowed with more than $12 million. It provides free access to a new Udacity course on generative AI. The goal is to support more than 50,000 students.

A collaboration with Code.org includes a "Hour of Code Dance Party: AI Edition" to introduce students to coding and AI "in a fun way."

Amazon's latest moves in AI

Amazon is reportedly developing a large language model called "Olympus" to compete with OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google in generative AI. An announcement could come in December.

Amazon also plans to invest up to $4 billion in AI startup Anthropic, securing a key partner in generative AI and access to AI models and chatbots like Claude. Anthropic will move its software to Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud infrastructure and train its AI models using Amazon's Trainium and Inferentia chipsets.

To "maximize resources for generative AI" development, Amazon also plans to cut hundreds of jobs in its Alexa division, according to an internal memo.