AWS Training and Certification Blog

Unlocking generative AI opportunities with AWS

Generative AI has the potential to transform every industry and line of business, revolutionizing sectors and enabling companies to unlock new opportunities. To ensure your organization maintains its competitive edge and keeps pace with innovation, mid-to-senior level leaders need to build the knowledge and skills to understand and maximize the full potential of generative AI.

The new learning program, Unlocking Generative AI Opportunities with AWS, is a six-week learning experience developed in collaboration with the Udemy Business Leadership Academy. It is uniquely designed to equip leaders across all industries with the generative AI knowledge and change management strategies they need to develop talent successfully and drive the digital transformation within their organizations.

Throughout the experience, leaders will build the following key skills:

  1. Generative AI technology: Organizations need tech-savvy leaders proficient in generative AI tools. This program provides access to PartyRock, an Amazon Bedrock playground, where participants engage in practical exercises in prompt engineering and capability exploration to help them learn how to reimagine businesses, boost productivity, redefine customer experiences, and create new business models.
  2. Change management: Leaders use change management skills to foster innovation and create a thriving organizational climate. Participants learn innovation concepts, engage in an innovation tournament, and generate actionable proposals for efficiency and performance improvements through generative AI projects.
  3. Communication and collaboration: Effective communication and collaboration are the keys to inspirational leadership, building trust and confidence while enhancing decision-making and driving innovation. The program guides leaders in developing communication strategies to articulate visions, provide clear directions, and foster open dialogues.

Collaborative learning with other leaders

The program connects leaders together to solve complex problems, generate and spread ideas, coach and learn from each other, and capture knowledge within the organization. Learners connect with their peers and certified expert moderators who answer questions, nudge people along, and facilitate the cohort learning experience. To help develop leadership teams at scale, this cohort program incorporates self-paced learning modules, microlearning, hands-on practice, and live, virtual events. Participants in the cohort will present and prioritize ideas, address AI misconceptions, design strategies, and learn skills to help inspire their teams with a forward-looking vision. Ultimately, progressing from a foundational understanding of generative AI to confident application, and enthusiasm for the possibilities that generative AI can help create for organizations of all sizes.

Hands-on with Amazon Bedrock and PartyRock

Early in the program, we’ll introduce foundation models, which are vast, complex networks trained on data. Amazon Bedrock is a catalyst for innovation with generative AI and is the easiest way to build and scale generative AI applications using foundation models. Amazon Bedrock is a fully managed service that offers a choice of high-performing foundation models (FMs) from leading AI companies: AI21 Labs, Anthropic, Cohere, Meta, Mistral AI, Stability AI, and Amazon. Through a single API, Amazon Bedrock grants access to a broad set of capabilities essential for building responsible generative AI applications with security, and privacy in mind. Throughout this cohort, learners explore how Amazon Bedrock and generative AI are driving business transformation, including process automation, enhanced customer experiences, and operational efficiency. Hands-on practice is integrated throughout the learning experience, enabling you to actively build and experiment with generative AI applications. You’ll engage with PartyRock, an Amazon Bedrock Playground- an intuitive platform where you can create and experiment with generative AI applications in just a few clicks.

Real-world use cases

After learning about Amazon Bedrock, you’ll then hear stories of how real teams are using generative AI to work more effectively. These stories will exemplify generative AI’s influence beyond IT with specific use cases from marketing, customer service, sales, and operations teams. With any new technology and innovation, you must be aware of how to promote the safe and responsible development of AI as a force for good. You’ll hear from the experts and discuss how others have dealt with ethical concerns that will arise as businesses begin to use generative AI. With the core dimensions of responsible AI outlined (fairness, explainability, privacy and security, robustness, and governance), you’ll have a framework to follow as generative AI gets integrated across your business.

Prompt engineering

After learning generative AI and its real-world applications, it’s time to transition to some specific uses for the technology. You’ll learn how teams interface with generative AI services and how prompt engineering comes into play. Prompt engineering is a key skill to learn how to refine your prompts, helping you improve the quality and relevance of your outputs. Imagine the freedom and opportunity of effectively communicating with AI, where every instruction is met with precise and tailored results. That’s the basis of prompt engineering. You’ll learn the key elements of an effective prompt and how adjusting the prompt’s elements can make AI’s responses more relevant and actionable.

Impact of generative AI across industries

Amazon has been a leader in AI for over 25 years, continuously introducing AI capabilities that help innovate for customers. In this cohort, you’ll also learn the most recent ways Amazon is leveraging generative AI to help organizations serve their customers. In healthcare, generative AI is making significant strides in personalizing patient care. In the finance sector, generative AI is revolutionizing fraud detection by analyzing transaction patterns to identify anomalies that may indicate fraudulent activity. In the retail sector, generative AI is changing the game in pricing strategies and enhancing the online shopping experience. The impact of generative AI across industries is nothing short of revolutionary.

Introducing generative AI in your organization

As the cohort progresses, you’ll get concrete guidance on how to get started and accelerate your team and your organization’s use of generative AI. Change is hard and it takes a thoughtful approach to introduce, and get your employees comfortable, with this emerging technology. You’ll understand how generative AI must start at the team-level, helping to cement and drive adoption from all parts of your organization. The experts at AWS and Udemy will help you plan your first generative AI project and then outline a path to expand generative AI’s use.

Identifying opportunities for innovation

Next, you will embark on a journey to unlock the secrets of building an innovation pipeline. First, you will explore the interplay between quantity, quality, and variety of ideas, unveiling their roles in driving a thriving innovation ecosystem. Next, you will learn to cast a wide net, exploring all sources to uncover innovation opportunities. Additionally, you will acquire techniques to generate fresh ideas and maximize the power of others’ innovations. Finally, you will gain the skills to identify and submit innovation opportunities into a cohort-based innovation tournament, fostering collaboration and synergy among innovators.

Communicating to inspire change

Did you know that a staggering 70% of change initiatives within organizations fail (Source: the McKinsey Group)? We’ll dive into this aspect of your leadership and arm you with strategies to beat the odds. You’ll master the art of crafting a compelling vision for the future that resonates deeply with you and your workforce. Additionally, you’ll acquire the skills of trustworthy leadership communication, empowering you to motivate, inspire, and guide teams towards achieving breakthrough changes. By the end, you’ll have the knowledge and tools to navigate the ever-changing landscape of organizational transformation.

Putting it all together

You’ll conclude the cohort with a collaborative team event, working together with colleagues to learn how generative AI tools like PartyRock can help you think through problems, optimize processes, and be a catalyst for innovation across your business. Through all the exercises, you’ll build confidence to use generative AI to augment and enhance your work, and the work of your team, and ignite the generative AI-powered era within your organization.

Now’s the time for you and your team to learn the what, why, and how behind generative AI – and how AWS can help. Sign up and get your team on the way to unlocking generative AI opportunities with AWS.