Reviews on top AI free courses that I've taken
Tags: machinelearning, ai, deeplearning, computervision
Published: 2020-01-13 14:43:30

This article was originally published on my [blog](https://www.alinrauta.com/)

Last year I've decided to get past the artificial intelligence buzzwords from the media articles and really have a clue about the subject. 

The more research I made the more I got intrigued and interested in AI. It baffled me how much AI will impact our lives and I realised this is the field I want to be in. 

So, I began searching for learning resources and immersed myself into all kinds of AI related material. This was a normal thing to do since I taught myself how to code and I figured that I can also teach myself at least the basic of AI.

After a few months of taking courses, I will give you my opinion on the most useful free courses I have taken, the ones I'm in progress of finishing and as a bonus the ones I intend to take in the future.

##Courses I've taken
[Intro to Artificial Intelligence](https://classroom.udacity.com/courses/cs271)
**About the course**
It's a classic on AI and it happened to be the first course I've ever taken on the subject. It's a comprehensive course that gives you just the right amount of information about all the branches and sub-branches that AI is made of. 

**About the teachers** 
The course is taught by two of the greatest advocates of AI:
- Sebastian Thrun: a former associate professor at Stanford University, co-founder of Udacity, led the team that won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge and co-developed Street View at Google.
- Peter Norvig: a director of research at Google and co-author of the leading college text in the field - Artificial Intelligence: A modern Approach

**Conclusion**
I can't recommend it enough. It's definitely a must.

[Elements of AI](https://course.elementsofai.com/)
**About the course**
This is a text based course and the aspect I loved the most about it was the fact that it makes you ponder about the role artificial intelligence is going to have in your life. I like the structure of the course and how quickly you can check if you really understood something by taking a quiz.

**About the teachers** 
It's created by Reaktor and the University of Helsinki. It's part of an initiative that wants to encourage as broad a group of people as possible to learn about AI. The goal is to make the course available in all EU languages.

**Conclusion**
It's a quick and engaging course to take to get the very basics on AI.

[Neural Networks and Deep Learning](https://www.coursera.org/learn/neural-networks-deep-learning?specialization=deep-learning)
**About the course**
This one is a bit more advanced in terms of knowledge you gain after its completion and it's part of a series of courses on deep learning. I like the fact that it's not getting too technical and you can easily get to understand more advanced nuances tools that are being used in AI, more exactly - deep learning.

**About the teachers** 
The course is taught by the one and only Andrew Ng: co-founder of Coursera, Adjunct Professor at Stanford University and an outspoken AI advocate.

**Conclusion**
It's the kind of course you need to take if you're serious about learning AI.

[Improving Deep Neural Networks](https://www.coursera.org/learn/deep-neural-network?specialization=deep-learning)
**About the course**
This is more of a sequel of the previous course and the purpose is to get your knowledge of deep learning one step further. This is where the magic happens in deep learning because it's more of an empirical process (trial and error) and you need to get a deeper (yeah, that's a pun) understanding before you know what parameters to tweak.

**About the teachers** 
The course is taught by the one and only Andrew Ng: co-founder of Coursera, Adjunct Professor at Stanford University and an outspoken AI advocate.

**Conclusion**
You really need to take this course if you already had taken the previous one.

[Introduction to TensorFlow for Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning](https://www.coursera.org/learn/introduction-tensorflow)
**About the course**
TensorFlow is an open source platform for machine learning and this course is about teaching you how to use TensorFlow in your AI applications. As a coder I really enjoyed this course because it has less theory and more practice into it.

**About the teachers** 
The course is taught by Laurence Moroney who is an AI advocate at Google and also part of the TensorFlow team. For me, he is one of the best teachers I've ever seen.

**Conclusion**
It's a friendly course for beginners and with lots of hands-on activities.

##In Progress
[Convolutional Neural Networks](https://www.coursera.org/learn/convolutional-neural-networks?specialization=deep-learning)
**About the course**
This course touches the concept of computer vision and builds on the knowledge acquired in the previous two courses from the [series](https://www.coursera.org/specializations/deep-learning). I can't wait to finish it and get more understanding of the computer vision field.

**About the teachers** 
The course is taught by the one and only Andrew Ng: co-founder of Coursera, Adjunct Professor at Stanford University and an outspoken AI advocate.

[Convolutional Neural Networks in TensorFlow](https://www.coursera.org/learn/convolutional-neural-networks-tensorflow)
**About the course**
This is a sequel of Introduction to TensorFlow for Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning course that I've already taken and things get even more practical in terms of coding which makes it highly appealing for coders.

**About the teachers** 
The course is taught by Laurence Moroney who is an AI advocate at Google and also part of the TensorFlow team. For me, he is one of the best teachers I've ever seen.

[Machine Learning](https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning)
**About the course**
This is probably the reference course on Machine Learning. It's by far the longest and the most technical one from all the courses I've taken. I believe it's worth the effort of finishing the course if you are serious about getting a job in AI.

**About the teachers** 
The course is taught by the one and only Andrew Ng: co-founder of Coursera, Adjunct Professor at Stanford University and an outspoken AI advocate.

##Courses I intend to take (BONUS)
[Learn AI With An AI](https://korbit.ai/machinelearning)
This seems really interesting and it's the next one on my list. 

[Introduction to Computer Vision](https://classroom.udacity.com/courses/ud810)
This course is a great companion for the Intro to Artificial Intelligence course and I hope it will broaden my knowledge on computer vision. 

[Machine Learning Crash Course](https://developers.google.com/machine-learning/crash-course/)
This one puts more emphasis on the technical side and it's a good fit after you dabbled with TensorFlow.

[Intro to Data Science](https://www.udacity.com/course/intro-to-data-science--ud359)
One of the most hot jobs in the world right now is the Data Scientist, so I think it's really useful to have an idea about the field, which intersects with AI.

I hope these reviews will be useful for you and I can't wait to hear your feedback or the experiences you had with other AI courses.


If you liked this article and want to see more of these, then follow me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/RautaAlin) and on [dev.to](https://dev.to/rautaalin).

P.S. I'm an indie maker and I'm writing a book on the basics of AI. If you want to support me and you're interested in AI, then you can pre-order my book at a discount here (you won't get charged until I finish the book): https://gumroad.com/l/SXpw/sideproject