ChatGPT effect: Coursera sees signups for AI courses every minute in 2023
18/01/2024 13:10
By Divya Chowdhury, Savio Shetty and Chavi Mehta
DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 18 (Reuters) - U.S. edutech
platform Coursera COUR.N added a new user every minute on
average for its artificial intelligence courses in 2023, CEO
Jeff Maggioncalda said on Thursday, in a clear sign of people
upskilling to tap a potential boom in generative AI.
The technology behind OpenAI's ChatGPT has taken the world
by a storm and sparked a race among companies to roll out their
own versions of the viral chatbot.
"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.
Coursera is looking to offer AI courses along with companies
that are the frontrunners in the AI race, including OpenAI and
Google's DeepMind, Maggioncalda said.
Investors had earlier feared that apps based on generative
AI might replace ed-tech firms, but on the contrary the
technology has encouraged more people to upskill, benefiting
companies such as Coursera.
The company has more than 800 AI courses and saw more than
7.4 million enrollments last year. Every student on the platform
gets access to a ChatGPT-like AI assistant called "Coach" that
provides personalized tutoring.
The bot is built using large language models from OpenAI and
Google's Gemini, Maggioncalda said, adding that the company does
not plan to build or train its own models.
"We'll probably be fine tuning with proprietary data just on
top of these large language models."
Coursera has also used the technology to translate about
4,000 courses in different languages and plans to ramp up hiring
for AI roles this year.
(Join GMF, a chatroom hosted on LSEG Messenger, for live
interviews: https://lseg.group/3TN7SHH)
(Reporting by Divya Chowdhury in Davos and Savio Shetty in
Mumbai; Writing by Chavi Mehta; Editing by Arun Koyyur)
((Chavi.Mehta@thomsonreuters.com;))