Google and Santander Offer Free AI Lessons

Google and Santander have teamed to offer a free course on artificial intelligence (AI).

Launched Tuesday (July 9), Santander | Google: Artificial Intelligence and Productivity is available in English, Spanish and Portuguese to anyone 18 and up, the global bank and the tech giant announced in a Tuesday news release.

“There’s absolutely no doubt that AI is revolutionizing our day to day, especially at the workplace and in the creation of new job opportunities and roles,” said Rafael Hernández, global head of Santander Universities. “This course provides valuable tools to boost job skills and generate greater competitiveness and seamless adaptation to the current and future demands of the job market.”

According to a news release, the course is designed for everyone, no matter their experiences and aims to teach students the basics of AI, along with lessons in practical AI apps and the ability to “give clear, precise commands to get the best out of AI tools.”

The course is happening as AI is helping drive demand for some workers amid a cooling job market, with artificial intelligence prompt engineers emerging as critical players in the field.

As PYMNTS wrote earlier this week, these workers combine technical skills and creativity to get the best responses from large language models (LLMs).

“Good prompt engineers know four things extremely well,” Andreas Welsch, founder and chief AI strategist at Intelligence Briefing, told PYMNTS. “Which model to use for the task, what the transactional cost of their AI use case is, which prompting technique to use for a given task, and what sequence of words to use in order to elicit specific, safe output with the least amount of tokens.”

Prompt engineers also need “a deep understanding of how LLMs work and their capabilities; excellent writing skills to craft clear, concise and effective prompts; domain expertise in the specific field the AI is being applied to; and the ability to collaborate with diverse teams,” Hardik Chawla, a senior product manager at Amazon working on LLM-based chatbots, told PYMNTS.

Meanwhile, PYMNTS wrote last week about a recent Google study warning of a glut of AI-generated content flooding the internet.

“The implications for eCommerce, digital marketing and consumer behavior are profound, potentially reshaping the online business landscape in both productive and concerning ways,” that report said.

The study found most generative AI users employ the technology to create and disseminate artificial content across the web. It’s a trend that offers unprecedented opportunities for content creation and customer engagement, but also means businesses may find it harder to build trust as consumers become increasingly skeptical of the authenticity of online information.