Student interest in ChatGPT skills on Udemy increased by 4,419% since 2022: Report

Udemy’s Global Workplace Learning Index for Q1 2023 indicates that ChatGPT, financial services, and courses aimed at developing students’ business teaching skills have experienced a massive uptick in interest from the site’s reported 49 million users.

This likely comes as no surprise as we’re currently experiencing what Wired recently described as a “Wet Hot AI Chatbot Summer,” coming on the heels of OpenAI’s launch of ChatGPT.

According to Udemy, topic consumption — the number of users taking courses featuring skills specific to ChatGPT — has risen 4,419%.

Other top tech skills receiving increased interest from students included Nutanix, Azure Machine Learning, and Amazon Elastic MapReduce — all cloud-related courses with applications in the field of machine learning. Artificial intelligence (AI) art generation also showed an uptick in interest, as did illustration.

The report also summarizes the top three surging skills by popularity for 15 countries. Despite the increase in topic consumption, ChatGPT only managed to break into the top three for the U.S. market, where it sits at the top spot. Artificial intelligence topped the list in Argentina and came in second in Canada.

Also of note, manufacturing, government, and financial services topped the list of surging industries, with related skills seeing outsized growth.

Beyond the tech industry, the report provides figures for skills in the “professional power skills” category. Leading the list is “teaching.” With a 764% increase in topic attention in Q1 2023, related skills were second only to ChatGPT in consumption. 

While the report doesn’t state any direct conclusions, it does include a quote from instructor Diego Davilla who says:

“Having a comprehensive understanding of ChatGPT and other emerging AI technologies will be imperative to quickly pivot in today’s era of rapid digital transformation.”

Chatbot technologies are already impacting the cryptocurrency world, with the advent of advanced trading bots capable of interfacing with third party plugins built on ChatGPT and similar platforms becoming increasingly popular.

Related: 5 free artificial intelligence courses and certifications

But the Udemy report also indicates that technologies underpinning blockchain development are seeing a rise in interest as well. Python certifications saw an uptick of 272% and FastAPI skills consumption increased by 102% — both are widely used in the development of blockchain tech.