5 Free Artificial Intelligence Courses from Top Universities

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Building AI assistants and AI agents is super popular among developers currently. Regardless of the area in which you work—data analytics, machine learning, DevOps, and more—you can always improve your workflow with AI. So where do you start?

Well, you can start by diving right into building AI applications and learn in the process. But learning the foundations of AI is just as important. And we have compiled a list of free university courses to help you learn AI fundamentals.

Note: You can access all of the following courses, including the ones offered on Coursera and edX, for free. You don't have to pay to access the course materials and learn. You only need to pay to get a verified certificate on Coursera and edX.

So let's go over these courses.

1. CS50’s Introduction to Artificial Intelligence with Python – Harvard

CS50's Introduction to Artificial Intelligence with Python from Harvard is a great first course that will help you build the algorithmic foundations of artificial intelligence.

To follow along with this course (and for the other courses) that follow, you should be comfortable programming with Python. In this course, you’ll get to explore search algorithms, machine learning, large language models, and more. The course spans about 7 weeks and you can work on projects in each of the modules.

Here’s an overview the topics covered in this course:

• Graph Search algorithms
• Advanced search
• Knowledge representation
• Logical inference
• Bayesian networks
• Markov model
• Machine learning
• Neural networks
• Natural language processing

Link: CS50's Introduction to Artificial Intelligence with Python

2. Artificial Intelligence – MIT

Artificial Intelligence (6.034) by Massachusetts Institute of Technology is an undergraduate level AI course that helps you learn the foundations you need to start building intelligent systems.

The focus is on the following:

• Knowledge representation
• Problem solving
• Learning methodologies for AI

You can access all the course contents for free on MIT OpenCourseWare. This course covers the following topics:

• Reasoning
• Search
• Constraints
• Learning algorithms
• Deep neural networks
• Probabilistic inference

Link: Artificial Intelligence

3. Artificial Intelligence: Principles and Techniques – Stanford University

Artificial Intelligence: Principles and Techniques (CS221) from Stanford is a comprehensive course to get an overview of the AI landscape. You’ll learn machine learning, search, game playing, and much more.

The topics that this course covers are as follows:

• Machine learning
• Search algorithms
• Markov decision processes
• Game playing
• Factor graphs
• Bayesian networks
• Logic
• Deep learning

Link: Stanford CS221: Artificial Intelligence: Principles and Techniques

4. AI in Healthcare Specialization – Stanford University

Healthcare remains one of the important areas that can benefit from the applications of AI. From efficient prognosis and diagnosis to making healthcare more accessible, AI applications—with AI safety and AI ethics—can be immensely helpful.

So if you’re looking to learn AI applications in healthcare, check out the AI in Healthcare specialization offered by Stanford University on Coursera. This specialization includes the following courses and a capstone project:

• Introduction to Healthcare
• Introduction to Clinical Data
• Fundamentals of Machine Learning for Healthcare
• Evaluations of AI Applications in Healthcare

Link: AI in Healthcare Specialization

5. Introduction to Generative AI – Duke University

Generative AI has become super popular with the recent advances and ongoing research in the field. And building useful applications with large language models is what developers are currently enjoying the most.

Introduction to Generative AI, offered by Duke University on Coursera, will introduce you to the generative AI landscape: working with open-source and closed-source large language models, cloud APIs, and more. The modules in this course are as follows:

• Introduction to Generative AI
• Interacting with models
• Building robust generative AI systems
• Applications of LLMs

Link: Introduction to Generative AI

Wrapping Up

I hope you found this round-up of free AI courses helpful. For courses that are offered on platforms such as Coursera and edX, you can sign up for a free account and audit the course to access the course contents for free.

If you're interested in learning machine learning foundations, read 5 Free University Courses to Learn Machine Learning.

Bala Priya C is a developer and technical writer from India. She likes working at the intersection of math, programming, data science, and content creation. Her areas of interest and expertise include DevOps, data science, and natural language processing. She enjoys reading, writing, coding, and coffee! Currently, she's working on learning and sharing her knowledge with the developer community by authoring tutorials, how-to guides, opinion pieces, and more. Bala also creates engaging resource overviews and coding tutorials.