There's a new cert in town!

Big news on the AWS Certification front!

The AWS AI Practitioner Certification, which was released in Beta in August 2024, has now changed status, from Beta to first release.

I had the pleasure of taking this certification very early in the Beta period (I passed the beta exam on August 29, 2024. You can see my credential here) and enjoyed the exam content and style.

With this certification moving to full, there are currently 11 AWS certifications available - 2 Practitioner level, 4 Associate level, 2 Professional level, and 3 Specialty level. There is also one more certification still in Beta - the Machine Learning Engineer Associate.

Given the general public's fascination with Large Language Models (LLMs) in general, and AWS's recent push to enhance their offerings in that domain (reference: Amazon Q and Amazon Bedrock, plus updates to Amazon SageMaker that make it much friendlier to importation and use of Foundation Models), is it any surprise that the focus of this certification is Generative AI and all that AWS brings to the user's table in that domain?

Let's walk through the exam guide quickly.

Domains

1. Fundamentals of AI and ML - This domain focuses on the candidate's understanding of basic AI concepts and terminologies.
2. Fundamentals of Generative AI - This domain looks at the candidate's knowledge of the basics of Generative AI.
3. Applications of Foundation Models - This domain tests the candidate's understanding of design considerations when incorporating foundation models into a system architecture.
4. Guidelines for Responsible AI - One of my favorite domains in the exam because it is essential; this domain tests a candidate's knowledge of the ethical and moral considerations involved in using AI as well as how users can ensure the models they create are responsible models.
5. Security, Compliance, and Governance for AI Solutions - My other favorite domain in the exam, because security and compliance are complex issues and need to be built in from early in the process; this domain tests the candidate's knowledge of the tools AWS provides for securing AI systems and the data that feeds them.

As with any AWS exam, the broad domains are broken down into a set of task statements that get into greater detail. This article is getting a bit long, so I won't dive into those here; suffice it to say that the task statements can help you focus your study into the subjects that are most essential for each of the domains.

This certification felt more like an associate level certification than a practitioner level; the expected knowledge level is deeper and broader than that required for the Cloud Practitioner.

Note that the exam incorporates a few new question types as well, which add depth to the topics covered and provide new and creative ways to test the candidate's knowledge.

As with all other AWS certification exams, the AI Practitioner includes multiple choice and multiple response questions. The new question types you might see include:

• Ordering - These question types include a list of 3 - 5 responses to complete a requested task. You must pick the correct responses and put them in the correct order to receive credit for the question.
• Matching - These question types include a list of responses and a list of 3 - 7 prompts. You must match all the pairs correctly to receive credit for the question.
• Case study - These question types include one scenario and 2+ questions about the scenario. Each question asked about the scenario are scored distinctly in this question type.

I saw all three of the new question types when I took the exam. I think my favorite was the case study, because by bringing multiple questions about the same scenario into the picture, it becomes easier for question authors to specify questions/situations that are more in-depth than you typically see with multiple choice and multiple response questions. Plus, because the questions are split up across multiple questions, it is easier to focus on the specific question, and you are not required to answer all related questions correctly to get credit for at least part of the case study.

If you are hoping to take this certification exam, I wish you the best of luck and am cheering for you. It's a fun certification on highly applicable knowledge. Which means if you take the time to learn the content, you are building a skillset that is in high and growing demand. And in today's job market, any advantage you can give yourself is a good one!