For a while now, we’ve known that AI skills are the in-demand skillset to fast-track your career, boost your earning potential, and future-proof/AI-proof your job. But even though many workers and employers are aware of this, we’re still a long way to go before AI fluency can be achieved.
Part of this is due to a lack of strategy and concerted effort; another factor can be attributed to low employee engagement, and the next most common and significant barrier to AI fluency and AI upskilling is lack of training time (about 41%), according to Skillsoft’s Global Skills Intelligence 2025 survey.
Between putting out fires at work, hopping on a “quick call” with a co-worker (which by the way, never really is a quick call is it?), and chasing deadlines while recovering from back-to-back meetings, it’s becoming even harder to keep up with the pace of change happening in our workplaces and industries. It’s all too easy for upskilling to then become an afterthought, something put on the back-burner.
Yet professional development, especially with regards to AI skills, is exactly what’s needed for organizations and individuals to future-proof themselves for 2026 and beyond.
Even Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn’s co-founder, noted that AI skills are one of the greatest competitive advantages for graduates entering the workforce and early career employees, helping them stand out in a crowded and shrinking job market. And job postings with one or more AI skills have a 28% salary premium on average according to Lightcast research, which is way better than your yearly pay raise.
3 AI Courses/Certifications To Learn AI Skills Fast In 2026
What if you only had a couple hours a week available here and there for deep work, or just a few moments of silence before everyone logs onto Teams?
Here are three easy certifications that teach you AI skill fundamentals in literally less than two hours. The first one up on the list can be completed in just over an hour:
1. Anthropic’s Free AI Fluency Certification
Anthropic is an industry name that you often hear in the same conversation as OpenAI, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot, because it’s the responsible AI-focused company behind Claude, an LLM similar to these other popular models. Anthropic recently dropped their free “AI Fluency” course where you can learn AI skills like:
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- AI fundamentals
- Knowing when to fact-check AI
- Knowing when you should just do the work yourself
- Prompting basics for business and work applications
2. Intro to AI Agents and Agentic AI
This course is well-reviewed on Udemy and is a little over two hours in total length. It covers agentic AI essentials such as:
- What an AI agent is
- How to build one yourself
- Different types of AI agents
- How to implement agents at work and use them as your teammates
By the end you receive a certificate and you can access the course on the go, even from your phone.
3. Databricks Generative AI Fundamentals
This on-demand course is free and is delivered by Databricks features four short modules and allows you to earn a badge upon completion, that you can share on your resume and proudly showcase on your LinkedIn profile. You’ll learn about:
- LLM foundational understanding (large language models)
- Using generative AI at work
- Risk assessment and challenges of using AI for business
How committed are you to your professional growth and AI upskilling? Don’t wait until it’s too late and you’re laid off from your role or at risk of job elimination before you start making AI skills a priority. Just a few hours a week can be a total lifesaver for your career.