Amazon Web Services (AWS) has several certifications that make it possible to show off one’s knowledge of the platform. I have four AWS certs, and not for any good, practical reason. I just enjoy learning about AWS and its features.

Yesterday, I became a certified AI practitioner by passing the AWS Certified AI Practitioner exam. It was fun test. Half the questions involved generative AI topics like temperature, hallucinations, fine-tuning, and RAG. The other questions were AWS-specific, requiring familiarity with AI services like SageMaker, Rekognition, Comprehend, Amazon Q, and Bedrock.

Speaking of Bedrock, if you have an AWS account, I recommend trying out the Bedrock playgrounds. They make it easy to access AI models, including Llama, Claude, Mistral, and Amazon’s Titan. I’ve submitted prompts to several of them, but I haven’t tried fine-tuning or continued pre-training. I’d imagime that would be expensive.

Recently, AWS released a new feature called PartyRock, which provides simple access to LLMs. I haven’t tried it, but it appears to be free, and you don’t even need an AWS account. It looks like Amazon’s goal is to bring newcomers into the world of Gen AI. I wish them luck.