CAIE (Certified Artificial Intelligence Engineer) Certification of USAII: my experience
In this statement, I would like to share my own experience of preparing for CAIE certification and successfully passing the exam.
Introduction
Well, I have been working in IT for many years, I also have an IT degree and several other IT certifications. However, in my career, I have rarely encountered tasks related to Artificial Intelligence. At university, I took an introductory course on AI, but nothing more.
Finally, due to the fact that AI is inevitably coming into our daily lives, I decided to include this topic in my career plan again.
Why I have chosen this certification?
Since I work as a technical professional, I thought of finding a certification that also provides technical and practical knowledge about AI.
I had the following criteria to find a certification that could meet my needs:
- the certification should not be about AI marketing or AI trading;
- the certification should not be tied to a specific platform (GCP, AWS, etc.);
- the preparation materials for the certification should include complete information about AI (how it works/backend programs/formulas, etc.).
After a few hours of research, I came across the USAII website where they offer different types of AI certifications, including CAIE.
NOTE: of course, there were many other courses that I could have chosen, but according to my needs, I decided to choose this one.
Did I have any doubts about the course?
I could say more “yes” than “no”.
Get janloo-security’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
The course provides you with e-labs and book materials. First, you get the books, and then after a few days, you get access to the e-labs.
So, I started my preparation with the books. The first few chapters are easy to understand, especially if you have a technical background. Then I accessed the e-labs and faced the first problem: the labs on the website are not really structured. It is somehow difficult to understand which lab is related to which chapter in the book.
Because of this problem, I started searching for some tips or advice on the Internet to understand how to organize my preparation process.
Finally, I found one discussion about this certification, where some people shared their experiences. Most of them said that the exam was easy and they did almost no special preparation. This is what calmed me down and I relaxed a little, however, it was not a good idea (explained below).
Was the preparation tough?
It was.
As I said, the first couple of chapters in the book materials are pretty easy to understand, but as you go further, the information becomes more complex. The course explains how different types of AI are structured, how they work in general, and how they work mathematically. Some of them also work as evolution of previous one: if you don’t understand the current model — you will not understand the next one neither.
TIPS: I started with introduction e-lab, then I did books materials in parallel with the other e-labs.
What does the exam look like?
Exam consists only of theoretical questions, you don’t have to code anything or calculate with formulas. As I remember you must answer on more than 75% of them.
Exam is proctored, so you will have to switch on your web camera during the exam.
TIPS: over the preparation, I paid a lot of attention to the names/abbreviations of the models and their usage options.
Who should take this certification?
If you want to understand the basics of AI: what models do, how models work on the backend, and what are the use cases, then this certification can definitely help you with these questions.
In my humble opinion, the course/certification haму built the basics of AI in my head, so now further research looks clearer to me.
Summary
The information, I’ve gathered in this article was really useful for me. I hope, it will be useful for someone else. If you have any recommendations, remarks or thoughts regarding the theme, do not hesitate to leave a comment.
