Yandex N.V., a Russian Dutch-domiciled multinational conglomerate, that provides over 70 internet-based products and services, is launching the first-of-its-kind online data labeling course on Coursera for free.

Sources with relevant information stated that Yandex intends to meet the increased industry demand for professionals with artificial intelligence expertise. The course is named ‘Practical crowdsourcing for efficient machine learning’ by Yandex.

Having been launched on March 15th, it will be taught by experts from Toloka, which is a data labeling, a crowdsourcing platform. Coursera now provides this course free of charge to anyone with internet access.

The five-week course will feature case studies of actual instances on processing and labeling data, enabling students to gain a practical understanding of crowdsourcing concepts and thereby allowing them to create their data labeling projects, sources claimed.

Notably, the course consists of breaking down complex, multifaceted tasks into straightforward, clearly defined jobs that can be executed by non-experts, who can then master the skills required to complete these tasks.

The CEO of Toloka, Olga Megorskaya, was quoted saying that the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated digital adoption while fueling the demand for technology-based talent. She added that mastering crowdsourcing technology can provide businesses and individuals the required competitive advantage.

This new course will help students to apply the theory to practical machine learning tasks, the CEO added.

Crowdsourcing has already been a core part of research and development institutes as well as tech companies across the world, including NASA. For those unaware, Yandex also conducts sessions on crowdsourcing at Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, the Higher School of Economics, and in Russia’s topmost research universities.

Crowdsourced solutions facilitate the smooth flow of demand and supply forces in the data labeling market, where the need for high-quality, scalable, and cost-efficient services is growing.

Professionals like data analysts, ML developers, researchers, and students, who are just considering these careers will benefit tremendously from the technical course. Moreover, this program does not have any prerequisites for enrolling and requires no background knowledge of machine learning.

Source Credit –

https://analyticsindiamag.com/yandex-launches-worlds-first-online-data-labelling-course-for-free/