The escalating demand for artificial intelligence (AI) education, Coursera, the prominent U.S. edutech platform, has announced an extraordinary milestone. According to Coursera CEO Jeff Maggioncalda's statement on Thursday, the platform attracted a new user every minute, on average, for its AI courses throughout the entirety of 2023. This development highlights a discernible trend of individuals actively seeking to enhance their skillsets and harness the potential opportunities arising from the burgeoning field of generative AI.Contrary to initial investor concerns that generative AI applications might render educational technology obsolete, the opposite seems to be true. Instead, this technology has become a catalyst for heightened interest in upskilling, proving to be beneficial for ed-tech firms like Coursera.

The platform has strategically positioned itself by forming partnerships with industry leaders such as OpenAI and Google's DeepMind to offer a comprehensive array of over 800 AI courses. Reuters reported that in the previous year alone, Coursera recorded an impressive 7.4 million enrollments.Furthermore, Coursera has integrated AI technology into its educational framework, providing every student with access to a ChatGPT-like AI assistant named "Coach" for personalized tutoring. Maggioncalda revealed that this AI assistant is constructed using large language models from OpenAI and Google's Gemini, with Coursera having no immediate plans to develop or train its own models.

The company anticipates refining these models through proprietary data and plans to expand its AI team with increased hiring in the coming year. As part of its commitment to global accessibility, Coursera has also utilized AI to translate around 4,000 courses into different languages, ensuring a broader reach for educational content.This surge in interest and enrollment in AI courses on Coursera reflects the broader global fascination with AI technology, driven in part by the widespread adoption of generative AI, exemplified by OpenAI's ChatGPT. The platform's commitment to innovation and collaboration positions it as a key player in meeting the evolving educational needs of a tech-driven world.