Designing Autonomous AI (Coursera)

Designing Autonomous AI (Coursera)

When children learn how to hit a baseball, they don’t start with fastballs. Their coaches begin with the basics: how to grip the handle of the bat, where to put their feet and how to keep their eyes on the ball. Similarly, an autonomous AI system needs a subject matter expert (SME) to break a complex process or problem into easier tasks that give the AI important clues about how to find a solution faster.

Class Deals by MOOC List - Click here and see Coursera's Active Discounts, Deals, and Promo Codes.

In this course, you’ll learn how to distill a business challenge into its component parts by creating an autonomous AI design plan. Using lessons, goal setting, skills, strategies and rewards, you’ll incorporate your SME’s knowledge directly into your AI’s “brain,” the agent that powers your autonomous system. You'll learn when and how to combine various AI architecture design patterns, as well as how to design an advanced AI at the architectural level without worrying about the implementation of neural networks or machine learning algorithms.
At the end of this course, you’ll be able to:
• Interview SMEs to extract their unique knowledge about a system or process
• Combine reinforcement learning with expert rules, optimization and mathematical calculations in an AI brain
• Design an autonomous AI brain from modular components to guide the learning process for a particular task
•. Validate your brain design against existing expertise and techniques for solving problems
• Produce a detailed specifications document so that someone else can build your AI brain

What You Will Learn
• You'll gain key AI terminology and understand how to teach and train AI.
• You'll design your own original autonomous AI system.

Syllabus

WEEK 1
Defining your AI
The first step in designing an autonomous AI is defining what your AI is going to do and what the goals are? Think about it like describing a game to someone. First you explain what the object of the game is, and then you describe the rules. In this module you'll learn how to do the same for your autonomous AI use case.

WEEK 2
Teaching Skills to your AI
Autonomous AI brains are built from skills. Skills are “units of competence for completing tasks that have sub-goals associated with them.” This week you'll learn to outline the skills you want your autonomous AI brain to learn. First, you’ll identify three different types of skills that you can build into your brains. Then, you’ll learn a strategy that will help easily extract and document skills from subject matter experts you interview. Along the way we’ll look at some design patterns that you can use as templates to start your use case brain designs.

WEEK 3
Organizing Skills in your AI
Now that you understand how to interview a subject matter expert and lay out all the skills that you want your AI to practice, you need to organize those skills in the brain. In this module you’ll learn two organizing paradigms for skills in autonomous AI, and a three-step framework for completing this orchestration. This week you’ll see some brain design patterns for example use cases, to help you with thinking about organizing your own use case brain design.

WEEK 4
Putting it All Together
Now it's time to put it all together. You've defined your AI, you've identified a set of skills that you want to teach your AI and you've used brain design patterns in the paradigms of orchestration to snap those skills together in the right arrangement. There's a few pitfalls to orchestration that you should be aware of and you’ll have lots of opportunity to practice creating variations on brain designs for sample problems. Make sure to share your brain designs from the lab in the forum, so we can discuss them together and learn from each other.

Go to Class
MOOC List is learner-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Related Courses

GitHub Copilot: The AI Pair Programmer for Coding (Coursera) Coursera
Edureka

GitHub Copilot: The AI Pair Programmer for Coding (Coursera)

Welcome to the 'GitHub Copilot: The AI Pair Programmer for Coding' course, where you will embark on an insightful journey to develop a profound understanding of the AI principles that power GitHub Copilot's coding assistance. This course is designed to transform your coding practices, leveraging the advanced capabilities of GitHub Copilot.

Sep 14th 2026
1 Week
El Abogado del Futuro: Legaltech y la Transformación Digital del Derecho (Coursera) Coursera
Universidad Austral

El Abogado del Futuro: Legaltech y la Transformación Digital del Derecho (Coursera)

La revolución digital cambió nuestra manera de comunicarnos, de comerciar y de relacionarnos. Ahora, está llegando al mundo del derecho. Este programa te ofrecerá una visión amplia de las principales tendencias que están afectando a la industria legal: - El nacimiento del mercado de legaltech y la aplicación de tecnología en el derecho. - El rol de la inteligencia artificial en la automatización del trabajo de los abogados. - La tecnología de blockchain y su impacto en la forma en que firmamos y ejecutamos contratos. - Las iniciativas para asegurar el acceso a la justicia a través de cortes virtuales y jueces robot.

Sep 7th 2026
5-12 Weeks
Prompt Engineering for Web Developers (Coursera) Coursera
Scrimba

Prompt Engineering for Web Developers (Coursera)

Not quite getting the results you want from ChatGPT? Wondering how you can use AI language models to your advantage? Then this course is for you! If you’ve spent any amount of time with AI language models like ChatGPT and Google Bard, you may have noticed the results can sometimes be, well, frustrating. When it comes to leveraging AI language models, your output is often only as good as your input. In other words, it’s all about learning how best to communicate your desired results. Effective prompt engineering is the secret sauce for getting the most out of AI.

Sep 14th 2026
3 Weeks
AI for Business: Generation & Prediction (Coursera) Coursera
Coursera Instructor Network

AI for Business: Generation & Prediction (Coursera)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not a new technology, it has been in development for decades. Today, however, AI is in the spotlight as it reshapes the way businesses operate, innovate, and engage with customers. Generative AI stands at the forefront of this transformation. This course demonstrates the foundations and practices of using Generative AI in Business settings.

Sep 14th 2026
1 Week
Gen AI for Code Generation for Python (Coursera) Coursera
Edureka

Gen AI for Code Generation for Python (Coursera)

Welcome to the 'Gen AI for Code Generation for Python' course, where you'll embark on a journey to explore and develop your skills in the art of code generation with Generative AI. Throughout this short course, you will delve into various techniques for generating Python code effortlessly, ranging from simple scripts to complete end-to-end projects.

Sep 14th 2026
1 Week
Innovative Teaching with ChatGPT (Coursera) Coursera
Vanderbilt University

Innovative Teaching with ChatGPT (Coursera)

Despite what you may have heard, ChatGPT offers exciting possibilities for supporting innovative teaching and personalized education. This course provides practical techniques that any educator, from K-12 to higher education, can use to help support their teaching. No experience with ChatGPT, prompt engineering, or Generative AI is required.

Sep 14th 2026
1 Week
Inteligência Artificial para Logística (Coursera) Coursera
FIA Business School

Inteligência Artificial para Logística (Coursera)

Nossas boas-vindas ao Curso Inteligência Artificial para Logística. Neste curso, você aprenderá sobre os processos de planejamento logístico, seu escopo de atuação e sua integração com as demais áreas da empresa, e como as novas tecnologias de inteligência artificial e internet das coisas podem ampliar a eficiência e a geração de valor para a empresa.

Sep 14th 2026
4 Weeks
Legal Tech and the Digital Transformation of Law (Coursera) Coursera
Universidad Austral

Legal Tech and the Digital Transformation of Law (Coursera)

The digital revolution changed the way we communicate and trade. Now, it is coming into the world of law. This program will give you a broad overview of the main trends that are affecting the legal industry: the birth of the legal tech market and the application of technology in law; the role of artificial intelligence in the automation of the work of lawyers; blockchain technology and its impact on the way we sign and execute contracts; initiatives to ensure access to justice through virtual courts and robot judges.

Sep 7th 2026
5-12 Weeks
Artificial Intelligence: An Overview (Coursera) Coursera
Politecnico di Milano

Artificial Intelligence: An Overview (Coursera)

The course will provide a non-technical overview of the artificial intelligence field. Initially, a discussion on the birth of AI is provided, remarking the seminal ideas and preliminary goals. Furthermore, the crucial weaknesses are presented and how these weaknesses have been circumvented. Then, the current state of AI is presented, in terms of goals, importance at national level, and strategies. Moreover, the taxonomy of the AI topics is presented.

Sep 14th 2026
5-12 Weeks
The AI Awakening: Implications for the Economy and Society (Coursera) Coursera
Stanford University

The AI Awakening: Implications for the Economy and Society (Coursera)

This course explores how the advances in artificial intelligence can and will transform our economy and society in the near future. You will hear insights from esteemed AI researchers and industry leaders in technology, economics, and business. The curriculum addresses the technological underpinnings of Generative AI, its profound implications for businesses and the broader economy, and the potential risks associated with AI-driven transformations in the workforce.

Sep 14th 2026
3 Weeks
GPT Vision: Seeing the World through Generative AI (Coursera) Coursera
Vanderbilt University

GPT Vision: Seeing the World through Generative AI (Coursera)

Imagine a world where your photos don't just capture memories, but also become intelligent assistants, helping you navigate and manage daily tasks. Welcome to "GPT Vision: Seeing the World Through Generative AI", a course designed to revolutionize how you interact with the world around you through the lens of Generative AI and photos.

Sep 7th 2026
2 Weeks