How to get into AI Course Launch 🚀
One of the questions I get asked most often is “How did you go from music to AI?”
Nearly as often: “How do you recommend people get into AI today?”
When you get asked the same line of questions often enough, it’s usually a good sign that you should go create a resource to answer them.
So, I decided to create a course called “How to get into AI.”
The AI All-stars
Since I only experienced my own path into AI, I decided to call on some of the top experts in the field to offer their stories, examples, and lessons learned.
My criteria was:
Has actually worked in AI (this surprisingly ruled out many top voices in AI)
Has worked at one or more of the top companies in AI
Has hired other people into AI roles
Had a non-traditional route into AI
Is engaging and dynamic
And here’s who I found:
• Pascal Bornet started in finance and has since worked in AI at EY, McKinsey, is a best-selling author of several books, and has amassed over 2M followers
• Cassie Kozyrkov started in neuroscience and became Google’s first Chief Decision Scientist, has created a well-known course on “Making Friends with Machine Learning,” and has amassed over 623K followers
• Carly Taylor started as a chemist and has since worked in AI at Activision | Blizzard, Microsoft, and XBOX, where she has worked on machine learning models to the scale of hundreds of millions of concurrent users, and she has amassed over 167K followers
• Noelle Russell started as an educator and has since worked at IBM, was on the founding Alexa team at Amazon, worked at Microsoft, made partner at Accenture, and she has her own book on AI coming out in March. She has 38K followers
• Brian Evergreen, well hopefully if you are reading this you know a bit about me, but I started out as a musician before I joined Accenture and dove headlong into analytics and machine learning, later joining Microsoft then Microsoft Research, and I’m the author of Autonomous Transformation
Our Q&A host
Having each worked in AI, we can easily fall prey to not knowing the most interesting part of our story or which questions would be most helpful, so I also asked my friend John Kraski (former PwC, JPMorganChase, and KPMG) to lead the Q&A and keep the discussion relevant and on-track.
Here’s the full lineup:
What we plan to cover
How to decide where you want to work in AI - We will dive deep into decision criteria that led to different career choices, with practical recommendations for how you can be thinking through your next step in 2025.
How to develop the right technical and soft skills - Each of us took different paths to develop the skills that we leveraged to get into AI at top companies. We will share the combination of resources, studying, and skill-building it took for each of us to reach our goals, and where we would start if we were starting today.
How to build the right network - You could be the best data scientist, the best product manager, or the best solution architect in the world, and it wouldn't matter if no one knows it or you. We will share how we developed our networks and the roles they played in our careers.
How to stand out (the right way) - Standing out for a job well done or for the momentum you might be building toward an initiative can be a tricky balance. We'll share how we got visibility to grow within our different organizations, how we raised our hands for extras assignments, and some of our lessons learned.
A glimpse into the future of jobs in the era of AI - Sometimes the loudest people on the internet about the future of jobs in the era of AI are people who don't understand AI. We will provide our honest perspectives on where job functions aligned with our areas of expertise are headed and what we recommend.
Real-world examples of AI jobs and projects - As we share our career stories, you will hear real-world examples of actual projects for top companies, revealing what it actually takes to implement AI and simplifying what is often opaque to people outside of AI.
I’ll also be sharing my resume that got me hired into Microsoft and we’ll be creating a community for those working to get into AI to collaborate and encourage each other.
Join us
So far, there are 121 people signed up.
This is the only time we’re going to be hosting this course live – after this cohort, we will be releasing a self-paced version with a digital booklet outlining key lessons, quotations, and takeaways.
If you or anyone in your community would be interested in joining us, please feel free to post and tag us online with the image above or share the course link directly via this discounted link: https://bit.ly/HowToGetIntoAI
Thanks for reading,
Brian
Whenever you're ready, here are 3 ways I can help you:
My LinkedIn Learning Course: Organizational Leadership in the Era of AI. This 48-minute course is packed with frameworks and insights to help you lead in the era of AI using the new system of leadership I introduced in Autonomous Transformation and is free to anyone with a LinkedIn Learning subscription
If you are looking for a keynote speaker for an event or team workshop, I’ve lectured everywhere from The Wharton School to Mastercard to Microsoft HQ on AI, AI agents, strategy, future of work, leadership, and skills of the future. Learn more about booking me as a speaker
If you want to go deeper as a team or organization, I’ve partnered with LinkedIn Learning, Emeritus, and Duarte to create tailored Future Solving™️ programs that leaders at Fortune 500 companies are implementing to help reembrace science in their decision-making and meet the complexities of the 21st century with a system of leadership, strategy, and decision-making that is built-for-purpose for era of artificial intelligence. You can reach out to connect and learn more