Learning helpful and foundational AI skills has never been easier; if you’re looking for quality AI learning on how to implement AI ethically, safely and effectively, the Introduction to Artificial Intelligence course is for you. It includes five key modules that build your AI skills as you progress, and it offers certification upon successful completion.
Introduction to Artificial Intelligence is the Canadian AI Advancement Institute’s full course and the foundation behind our beginner course offerings. This course spans five modules and is supported by the 16-chapter Introduction to Artificial Intelligence textbook, which guides you through the basics of AI ethics, AI security, machine learning, model training, prompt engineering, the practical applications of generative AI, and the customization of no-code AI tools.
This text is supported by educational experts from across Canada, the United States, and Europe, who share their AI insights to bring you relevant, valuable knowledge. This course was developed with their guidance and in consultation with public- and private-sector stakeholders.
The course runs in five modules, with an introduction, a conclusion, and a final examination.
This AI learning is asynchronous and self-paced. Chapter readings and course videos are hosted on the course platform and completed at your discretion; there are also no live sessions, so there are no meetings to miss.
Assessment is completion-based, with chapter quizzes through each module requiring 70% or higher, module assignments, and a final exam. You need 70% or higher on the final exam to receive the Canadian AI Professional certification.
The certification requires annual renewal, which keeps it current with ongoing AI advancements. This structure is deliberate, as the credential is intended to serve as a reference point for stakeholders and employers.
Uncoordinated and incomplete AI literacy is common in Canada and has become increasingly costly. Statistics Canada found that 19.2% of Canadian businesses used AI to produce goods or deliver services in the second quarter of 2026, triple the share two years earlier, but that only 32.0% of AI-using businesses trained their existing employees. Most people using these tools at work assembled what they know on their own.
Employers are now paying for the difference. The Future Skills Centre reports that demand for core AI skills rose 37% between 2018 and 2023, and workers with AI competencies command up to a 56% wage premium. It also found that only 31% of small and medium-sized organizations could clearly say which AI skills they needed, which is exactly the situation in which a recognized credential does useful work for you.
The responsibility side is hardening too. Canada’s federal, provincial and territorial privacy regulators have published joint principles for responsible, trustworthy and privacy-protective generative AI technologies, setting out how existing privacy law applies.
This course is the standard behind our AI literacy services. We have taught its material to university staff, faculty, students, and alumni; small business owners; association leaders; and management teams at organizations ranging from a zoo to a property maintenance firm. Below are just a few of the AI learning engagements we have facilitated:
These articles come from the same curriculum work as the course, and give a fair preview of how each module is taught.
These articles detail the course curriculum module by module, one post for each of the five modules, and are the closest thing to a syllabus preview.
Learners or employers are usually unaware of opportunities to pay for their learning. We have shared resources to help you identify available funding opportunities, including scholarships for individuals and grant programs for individuals and employers.
Apply for a scholarship through our Canadian AI scholarships page. In addition, visit our Canadian AI grant funding page to see what individuals or employers can apply for.
Timothy King works with CyberSci, Canada’s national cyber security challenge, which runs regional and national competitions for college and university students across the country. He comes to it from the Information and Communications Technology Council, where, as an Education and Emerging Technologies Specialist, he built cyber and digital skills education nationally, and from the computer technology classroom he taught in from 2007 at Centre Wellington District High School in rural Ontario. Timothy recorded a Season 1 expert insight interview with the Canadian AI Advancement Institute in May 2026.
Tristan Taylor is the founder of the Canadian AI Advancement Institute and the International AI Advancement Institute, which he started to help people learn, adapt and succeed with AI, at home in Canada and internationally. He is based in Langley, British Columbia, and wrote CAIAI’s Introduction to Artificial Intelligence textbook. Tristan recorded a Season 1 expert insight interview with the Canadian AI Advancement Institute in May 2026.
Mariami Tkeshelashvili is the Director for Artificial Intelligence Security Policy at the Institute for Security and Technology in Washington, where she leads the AI Risk Reduction Initiative. She brings over a decade of experience in international security and global governance, and has published research on AI compliance failures and on how policymakers might see an AI loss-of-control incident coming. Mariami shared written expert insights with the Canadian AI Advancement Institute in September 2025, and we cite those insights across many of our courses, including Introduction to Artificial Intelligence.
Mark Hobbs is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Fundmetric, a Halifax company that builds machine learning and data infrastructure for fundraising in charities and universities. He started it in 2013 and has co-authored peer-reviewed research on predicting donor behaviour with neural networks. Mark shared written expert insights with the Canadian AI Advancement Institute in December 2024, and returned to record a Season 1 expert insight interview in July 2026.
Matthew da Mota is Research Director, Emerging Technology and National Security at the Canadian Shield Institute, where he works on Canadian economic sovereignty, focusing on AI, defence, and dual-use technology. He previously ran the Global AI Risks Initiative at the Centre for International Governance Innovation. Matthew shared written expert insights with the Canadian AI Advancement Institute in October 2025, and we cite them across many of our courses, including Introduction to Artificial Intelligence.
Patrick Tammer leads Strategy and Operations in Google‘s AI and infrastructure group and previously served as a senior investment director at Scale AI, Canada’s AI global innovation cluster, where he invested in more than a hundred companies and AI implementation projects. He edits the Harvard/MIT Journal of Business and Artificial Intelligence and shares insights on his own platforms and in various outlets. Patrick shared written expert insights with the Canadian AI Advancement Institute in September 2025, and returned to record a Season 1 expert insight interview.
Revan MacQueen is a machine learning engineer at RL Core Technologies in Edmonton, where he builds reinforcement learning agents that control industrial processes. He holds a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Alberta, where he studied under James R. Wright; his research on self-play in multiplayer games was published at NeurIPS, and he has taught machine learning foundations at the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute. Revan shared written expert insights with the Canadian AI Advancement Institute in September 2025, and returned to record a Season 1 expert insight interview.
Sireesha Chavali is a data engineer and AI safety advocate based in Edinburgh, Scotland, who works on data pipelines and conversational AI using Google BigQuery, Microsoft Azure, and Power Apps. She serves as Partnership Lead on the USA operations team at Women in AI, and teaches practical AI skills to professionals at MIT. Sireesha shared written expert insights with the Canadian AI Advancement Institute in September 2025, and we cite those insights in our Introduction to Artificial Intelligence course.
Daryl Hatton is a Vancouver entrepreneur and the CEO of ConnectionPoint, the collaborative funding company behind the FundRazr, Crowdfundr, and CoCoPay platforms. He helped take an enterprise software company to a NASDAQ listing in 1999, rebuilt it after the dot-com crash, and sold it in 2008, the same year he founded FundRazr. Daryl shared written expert insights with the Canadian AI Advancement Institute in January 2025, and those insights are cited in our Introduction to Artificial Intelligence course and in our course on AI ethics and security.
Derek Froese is the founder and President of Koala Technology Ltd., an IT consulting firm in Abbotsford, British Columbia, that has grown from IT support into digital adoption consulting, business automation, and AI. He works with clients across Canada, and much of his practice helps small and medium-sized businesses address their IT and automation needs. Derek shared written expert insights with the Canadian AI Advancement Institute in January 2025, and returned to record a Season 1 expert insight interview. In addition, Derek has supported the CAIAI in its ongoing engagements with UFV, including as a judge at the 2026 Community Ideation Jam (Changemaking with AI).
You can enrol directly on our learning platform, or use the form below to check first whether a scholarship applies to you.
Our mission is to help Canadians learn, adapt and succeed with AI. This course is the fullest expression of that: a standardized grounding in AI, built with industry experts and institutions, ending in a credential Canadian employers can read. The tools are already in Canadian workplaces. What decides whether they help is whether the people using them were taught properly.
