In a strong indication that individuals are upskilling to take advantage of the future boom in generative AI, CEO Jeff Maggioncalda of the American edutech platform Coursera stated on Thursday that the company will add a new user to its artificial intelligence courses every minute on average starting in 2023.

With the help of OpenAI’s ChatGPT technology, businesses are racing to release their own iterations of the popular chatbot, which has taken the world by storm.

“I’d say the real hotspot is generative AI because it affects so many people,” he told Reuters in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

According to Maggioncalda, Coursera plans to provide AI courses in conjunction with Google’s DeepMind and OpenAI, two of the leading AI startups.

Investors had previously worried that generative AI-based apps would displace ed-tech companies; however, the technology has actually encouraged more individuals to upgrade their skills, which has benefited businesses like Coursera.

Over 7.4 million people enrolled in the company’s more than 800 AI courses last year. A ChatGPT-like AI assistant named “Coach” is available to all platform users, offering individualised tutoring to each learner.

According to Maggioncalda, the bot was developed with extensive language models from OpenAI and Google’s Gemini. The company has no intention of creating or refining its own models.

“We’ll probably be fine tuning with proprietary data just on top of these large language models.”

Additionally, Coursera has translated roughly 4,000 courses into other languages using this technology, and this year, it intends to increase employment for AI positions.

(Adapted from MarketScreener.com)