In a recent development, Amazon announced that it will make online courses by its Machine Learning University available to the public. The classes were previously only available to Amazon employees. 

The company believes that machine learning has the potential to transform businesses in all industries, but there’s a major limitation: demand for individuals with ML expertise far outweighs supply. That’s a challenge for Amazon, and for companies big and small across the globe.

The Machine Learning University (MLU) was founded with an aim to meet this demand in 2016. It helped ML practitioners sharpen their skills and keep them abreast with the latest developments in the field. The classes are taught by Amazon ML experts. 

The tech giant now plans to make these classes available to the ML community across the globe. It will include nine more in-depth courses before the year ends. As the blog post notes, by the beginning of 2021, all MLU classes will be available via on-demand video, along with associated coding materials. It will cover topics such as natural language processing, computer vision and tabular data while addressing various business problems. 

“By going public with the classes, we are contributing to the scientific community on the topic of machine learning, and making machine learning more democratic,” said Brent Werness, AWS research scientist and MLU’s academic director. 

“This initiative to bring our courseware online represents a step toward lowering barriers for software developers, students and other builders who want to get started with practical machine learning,” he added. 

“Instead of a three-class sequence that takes upwards of 18 or 20 weeks to complete, in the accelerated classes we can engage students with machine learning right up front,” shared Ben Starsky, MLU program manager. 

The company said that similar to other open-source initiatives, MLU’s courseware will evolve to improve over time based on input from the builder community. It also looking to rebuild its curriculum to further integrate ‘dive into deep learning’ into class sessions. 

The company wants to include as many important things as possible while offering flexibility in the way people can take these classes.