New AWS skills initiatives help APAC get AI-ready

The Asia Pacific (APAC) region is a hub for global innovation. From Japan to Indonesia, and further south to New Zealand, organizations and individuals from diverse communities are actively embracing and integrating the latest and most advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), to improve their lives and work.

At Amazon Web Services (AWS), we hear first-hand from our customers about the need to bridge the digital skills gap to accelerate innovation. It inspires us to keep innovating in new ways to reach people at scale with cloud skills training and programs, which are crucial to the growth and prosperity of APAC’s digital economies.

This month we are celebrating an incredible milestone. Since 2017, AWS has trained more than 7 million people with cloud skills across APAC—3.5 million of these learners were trained in the past year, and we’re just getting started!

This is testament to the work we do every day with governments, educators, and industry to help individuals build in-demand digital skills and nurture a digital-ready workforce.

The next big technology revolution

The next major technology revolution is knocking at the door of organizations across APAC: generative AI. This new and evolving technology empowers machines to not only process information but create new content and solutions autonomously.

Not since the early days of cloud have we seen the heightened level of interest from customers as we have with generative AI. In fact, 70% of organizations in Asia Pacific have already explored or committed to investing in generative AI technologies according to a recent International Data Corporation report.

Its ability to generate realistic and contextually relevant outputs across diverse domains, from text to images, opens up new opportunities for automation, creativity, and problem-solving across a wide range of industries, including consumer, finance, healthcare, entertainment and media.

Andrew Sklar, director of AWS Training and Certification, APJ

APAC customers leading the way on upskilling for generative AI

In July 2023, we announced seven free and low-cost digital courses to help organizations and individuals understand, implement, and begin using generative AI. It’s imperative that businesses start upskilling their tech and non-tech employees now so they can harness the opportunity to build on this technology.

Our AWS Training and Certification team is here to help you get started. We’re already seeing incredible enthusiasm and progress from partners and customers across the region.

Through its AWS Skills Guild, Wipro—one of India’s leading Big Tech companies—recently held an AWS Jam event so its developers could learn to solve real-world problems using Amazon CodeWhisperer, our machine learning-powered code generator that provides code recommendations in real time.

The shortage of cloud developers worldwide continues to impact those in the profession who are tasked with solving more business problems with less time. Aside from writing code, they are trying to keep up with the ever-changing landscape of programming languages, tools, frameworks, SDKs, APIs, and more.

The AWS Jam session challenged Wipro’s developers to build foundational skills through practical gamified learning. From the outset, Wipro has understood the importance of upskilling their entire team’s generative AI capabilities, and their developers have fully embraced it!

To help prepare students for the jobs of the future, RevoU—Indonesia’s largest live online learning community—collaborated with AWS to conduct generative AI training sessions for the company’s members. RevoU believes generative AI skills are essential for Indonesia’s future workforce.

During each session, students gained new skills such as natural language processing, image generation, and data syntheses, which are vital for understanding and applying generative AI in real-world applications.

RevoU highlighted the practically of the training content, effectiveness of the instructors, and overall enhancement of the students’ knowledge of generative AI. RevoU’s CEO, Matteo Sutto, told us that the students came away feeling more adept and confident in this rapidly evolving domain.

Getting AI Ready – NEW free AI skills initiatives

The need for an AI-savvy workforce to address the world’s most challenge problems has never been greater. That’s why we’ve decided to make AI education accessible to anyone with a desire to learn.

Starting this month, AWS is launching new AI skills initiatives for adults and students, and expanding our existing free AI training programs so that people can get equipped with these critical skills without cost being a barrier. The three initiatives are:

• Eight free AI and generative AI courses open to anyone and aligned to in-demand jobs, with courses ranging from foundational to advanced for business leaders as well as technologists.
• US $12 million in AWS Generative AI Scholarships, providing more than 50,000 high school and university students from underserved and underrepresented communities globally with access to a new foundational generative AI course on Udacity.
• New collaboration with Code.org designed to help young students learn about generative AI via the Hour of Code Dancy Party: AI Edition – an hour-long introduction to coding and AI where students will create their own music video set to hit songs from artists including Harry Styles.

Our new AI Ready skilling initiatives will help support some of the most talented and untapped future tech professionals across APAC’s underserved and underrepresented communities.

AWS Laptop for Builders learners at AWS Indonesia Cloud Day 2023

We’re already seeing that through our local and custom programs like AWS Laptop for Builders in Indonesia and AWS re/Start—now available in 13 APAC countries—which are equipping many people from minority, displaced, and refugee groups with the skills to launch entry-level tech careers.

We believe AI and ML are among the most transformational technologies of our time. AWS is committed to supporting organizations and individuals from all walks of life for the path ahead through our continued investment in new digital skills training programs across the APAC region. We are in the early stages of a technological revolution that will continue for decades to come, and we are excited to see how our customers put this technology in action!

Utilize AWS Skill Builder to access AWS’s free and subscription cloud skills courses.