Today, Google launched its new Google AI Professional Certificate, a course designed to equip American workers and small businesses with the practical AI skills for today’s workforce.
This comes as new research shows only 5% of U.S. workers are AI fluent, despite findings that AI-fluent workers are 4.5x more likely to earn higher wages. Google is offering every U.S. small business free access to the certificate training program to give to employees and help close this growing “AI Fluency Gap”.
The certification course, which can be completed in under 10 hours, will help workers master over 20 useful applications of AI, including creating data-backed market research plans, generating custom marketing assets, data visualization, and vibe-coding custom apps for their workflows. The curriculum is informed by research from the Burning Glass Institute (BGI) on where AI is most transforming work.
In New York State alone, more than 1.17 million businesses already use Google’s free tools to best serve customers, with 35,000+ New York small businesses trained by a Grow with Google coach. Now, Google is expanding that support by offering every U.S. small business free access to the certificate training program, plus three months of no-cost access to Google AI Pro and the Google Workspace Business Standard plan to practice using advanced AI tools. Google is also providing New York’s public universities with no-cost access to this training and advanced AI tools via the Google AI for Education Accelerator.
The certificate is available for learners on Coursera, Udemy, and Google Skills.
