Google AI Essentials Course Review
If you haven’t started considering leveraging AI to help you do your job, now might be a good time to do so.
Duolingo recently announced they will be adopting an AI-First policy to manage their head count. They are one of a growing number of companies to do so.
If you work at a company that has an AI-First policy, you’ll be expected to show competency in AI during your next performance review. If you don’t, your job could be on the chopping block.
Even though more and more companies want their employees to know how to use AI, there isn’t really a process to follow. You can’t really go to school to get a degree in AI just yet (unless you go the computer science track) and while online courses are a good way to go, not all of them are created equally.
If you’re not careful, you could wind up paying a pretty penny to a hustle bro who uses AI to create a flashy course to teach YOU how to use AI.
(I actually worked with a personal finance influencer who did this. They’re selling a $1,500 investing course that they created using ChatGPT. And no, they did not disclose this to anyone, not even their customers…)
That’s why I decided to create my own AI learning program. I’m going to take courses online through platforms like Coursera and give you my honest feedback on whether or not the course is worth it.
Ideally, AI should help be more productive and valuable at work. But unless you take the time to learn how to use AI effectively you’re not really going to be able to capitalize on the productivity it offers.
This is the first review on an AI course: Google AI Essentials offered on Coursera.
Course Structure
Google AI Essentials consists of five modules that take about six hours to complete. Depending on your schedule, you could complete the course in a weekend or take it one module at a time during your lunch break.
Each module includes 2-8 minute videos, a practice exercise, and a graded knowledge check. The modules are broken down into the following topics:
Introduction to AI
Maximize Productivity with AI Tools
Discover the Art of Prompting
Use AI Responsibly
Stay Ahead of the AI Curve
The practice exercise uses Gemini to show you how to work with AI. While these exercises are optional, you’ll want to do them to get the most out of the course.
A couple of modules include dialogue exercises where an AI chatbot prompts you with short-form questions. This is a responsive exercise designed to get you to think about how to use AI at work.
The modules are a very general, 75,000 view of what AI is and how it works, specifically for someone who might use it to help them build slide decks or respond to emails faster.
What I Didn’t Like About the Course
Personally, I thought the course was underwhelming. While I appreciated the opportunity to learn key terms in new contexts, I didn’t really learn a new skill and most of the applications that were recommended are common sense.
At this point, I think most people understand you can use AI to summarize things like email. I don’t need to be told that AI can do that. Instead, I need to be shown examples of how AI does it.
If I prompt Gemini to write an email for me and I end up rewriting it, it doesn’t actually save me much time. The skill isn’t in knowing how to apply it, it’s in successfully writing prompts so you can get the outcome you want with minimal oversight.
The exercises were somewhat useful, however, Google hasn’t fully rolled out the Gemini integration within Google Workspace just yet. There were a couple of exercises I couldn’t do.
I have both a free and paid Workspace account. The paid account doesn’t have Gemini while my free account does but I couldn’t use it unless I upgraded to a Workspace account. I’m not going to pay for two Workspace accounts so until Google rolls out Gemini across all its products, the course doesn’t offer as much value as it could.
That being said, it does seem like there is a lot of potential for using AI within things like Sheets, Docs, and Slides. I do use these regularly so if and when Gemini is fully rolled out, I would be inclined to take a course to learn how to use all of the features to their fullest capacity.
Each module was “taught” by a different Google employee. Most of these “teachers” spent more time than I thought was necessary talking about themselves. I personally don’t care what you studied in college or how your interest in computers landed you a job at Google. I care about becoming AI literate.
Overall, I didn’t think there was much substance to the course. That being said, if you’re totally new to AI and have never used a chatbot like Gemini before, you might find the course valuable.
What I Liked About the Course
While Google AI Essentials was too easy for my liking, that’s not to say that there’s no value in it.
If you’ve never used an AI tool and have no clue how you would even go about using one, this is the course for you. It breaks down what AI is in simple terms and contextualizes it so you can understand how it applies to your job.
I personally didn’t feel like the course taught me any new skills, but it did make me more aware of skills I need to develop.
One of the main themes of the course is iteration. Basically, if you want to learn how to get good at prompting you need to practice. You’ll learn to be a better prompter through trial and error.
On top of that, AI isn’t perfect. The course covered hallucinations and bias extensively, emphasizing the need to fact check your work.
Using AI isn’t so much the skill you develop. Instead there are skills around using AI that you should focus on. You need to make judgments about when to use it, whether or not the outcome is what you wanted, and whether or not the outcome is actually true.
This requires critical thinking. You need to be able to discern what’s working from what isn’t while also differentiating fact from fiction. Iterative practice and fact checking are ways to develop that skill.
The course also emphasized becoming aware of new tools and how to use them. It suggested that you should read AI blogs and stay on top of the news.
Again, that’s kind of an obvious recommendation. You don’t need a course to tell you that. But within the awareness you cultivate through staying on top of AI news, there’s skills you will pick up.
One example is requirements generation. I think most people use different SaaS tools, not because they’re the most effective at completing a task, but because they’re what everyone else is using.
Slack is an example. Just because you can use Slack doesn’t mean you should. But if you don’t know the requirements for your job or the tasks in a project you’re working on, you don’t have a way to rule out using one tool over another.
AI is evolving rapidly. To stay ahead of the curve, you need to know what your job actually consists of and begin understanding the requirements for completing your job. Once you know what the requirements are, you can evaluate AI tools to see which tool would work best for you.
Eliminate-Delegate-Automate is a framework I use to develop requirements and outsource tasks to assistants or automate with software. You can read more about that here.
Should You Enroll in Google AI Essentials?
If you have some exposure to AI and are looking to develop an actual skill like prompting, I wouldn’t start with Google AI Essentials. The material covered in the course is basic. You can find it all for free online and until Google makes Gemini more accessible, I don’t know how much value you’ll get from the practice exercises.
That being said, more and more employers want AI literate employees. The problem is no one really knows what that means right now. The more credentials you can rack up for yourself, the more AI literate you can claim to be and the valuable you’ll become. This is a really easy course to get started establishing AI literacy.
It can also be a good course if you use Google Workplace regularly. The exercises walk through how to use Gemini-integrated AI within Google’s suite of products including Mail and Sheets. While I think they need to make these integrations more accessible, it’s likely that is currently in the works. If you use Google products regularly, you’ll want to spend time learning how to use AI-powered features within Google.
The course is $49. It’s not too expensive but for what you learn in the course, I think that price is a bit steep. If you can write it off on your taxes or have a continuing education benefit at work it could be worth it.
At the end of the day, you have to start somewhere. If you haven’t started learning AI yet, this is a good place to do so.
