AI For All - San José : Bay Area Council

AI For All - San José

Mayor Mahan of San José | Bay Area Council | OpenAI | Google | Anthropic

AI For All – San José is a collaborative program designed for the residents of San José, to offer high quality AI Literacy Training, free of charge for all. As the program launches, stay tuned for additional live training offerings and events, both in person with the San José Public Library and virtual.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is AI For All San José?

AI For All San José is a citywide initiative to ensure every San José resident has access to free, high-quality AI and digital literacy training.

Why is San José launching this initiative?

Our goal is to make San José the most AI Literate population on earth, providing training and tools needed to benefit the community and close the digital divide.

Who is this program for?

This initiative is designed for all San José residents, with priority support for:

Underrepresented and underserved communities
Unemployed and underemployed residents and career-switchers

No prior tech or coding experience required.

What skills will participants gain?

Participants will receive training in:

AI fundamentals and everyday use cases
Responsible and safe AI practices
Productivity and workplace AI skills

Is the program free?

Yes — AI For All San José is free for residents

Do participants earn a certificate?

Yes. Participants earn an AI Literacy Certificate recognized by local employers and education partners. Additional micro-credentials may be available.

How long is the program?

The program is self-paced. Each technology partner’s program differs in length with most taking 1–6 hours, with optional deeper pathways of 10–60 hours, depending on participant goals.

Where will the training take place?

Training is available online via this website.

Additional in-person training will be available through the San José Library.

Who are the partners?

The initiative is led by The Bay Area Council and The City of San José, in collaboration with Google, OpenAI and Anthropic.

How will success be measured?

Core outcomes include:

Number of residents trained and certified
Participation of priority populations

Community satisfaction and ongoing engagement

Will this initiative roll out to other cities and geographies?

Yes! The intent is for San José to light the way for other cities in the months to come. Stay tuned for additional announcements in the weeks to come.

How do I enroll or stay updated?

All information will be shared via this website, or complete our contact form for additional questions.

DETAILED OFFERINGS

GOOGLE

500 library check-out style licenses

Here is the link where you can access our full courses; you may first need to create a free Coursera account. The following two PDFs outline our key competencies and skill mappings.

Does your training require an account to be created?
a. Yes. Users need to create a free account on the Coursera platform. SJ would then lend out one of their scholarships to the user, using their name and email address.
b. Privacy details here
How long is the training?
a. About 6 hours (self-paced and 100% on-demand)
Does the user receive a certification at the end?
a. A certificate of completion, but you need to complete all required activities and pass all assessments with 80%+ to earn it. (not a registered Certification)

Additional Info: Google AI Essentials is a self-paced course designed to help people across roles and industries get essential AI skills to boost their productivity, zero experience required. The course is taught by AI experts at Google who are working to make the technology helpful for everyone. In under 5 hours, they’ll do more than teach you about AI — they’ll show you how to actually use it in the real world.

> Stuck at the beginning of a project? You’ll learn how to use AI tools to generate ideas and content.

> Planning an event? You’ll use AI tools to help research, organize, and make more informed decisions.

> Drowning in a flooded inbox? You’ll use AI tools to help speed up those daily work tasks like drafting email responses.

You’ll also learn how to write effective prompts and use AI responsibly by identifying AI’s potential biases and avoiding harm. After you complete the course, you’ll earn a certificate from Google to share with your network. By using AI as a helpful collaboration tool, you can set yourself up for success in today’s dynamic workplace — and you don’t even need programming skills to use it.

Google Prompting Essentials is a course that helps people effectively prompt gen AI tools in 5 easy steps, to save time and simplify complex tasks. No previous experience is necessary. Taught by AI experts at Google, this self-paced course can be completed in under 10 hours. The course focuses on how to generate useful results, while keeping in mind responsible AI practices, like evaluating outputs for bias and errors. As they progress through the course, learners create a library of reusable prompts, so the next time they need a little help from AI, they’re not prompting from scratch. The skills from the course can be applied across any generative AI tool or model.

ANTHROPIC

AI Literacy Offering:

AI Fluency: Framework & Foundation
AI fluency framework – creative commons license – 10 lessons and 10 practice exercises
Total time: 5-10 hours, although users can complete the core content in 1-2 hours

1. Does your training require an account to be created?
  a. Yes. Users need to create a free account on the Skilljar website
  b. Data Privacy: There are answers to FAQs including on data at the bottom of the skilljar.anthropic.com page – let me know if any more information is needed.
2. How long is the training?
  a. Up to 10 hrs of content if include exercises but learner can do the main modules in 1-2 hours
3. Does the user receive a certification at the end?

A certificate of completion (not a registered Certification)

About the course (brief):

Anthropic has partnered with academic experts Prof. Joseph Feller (University College Cork) and Prof. Rick Dakan (Ringling College) to launch an AI fluency course that teaches practical skills for effective, efficient, ethical, and safe AI interaction. This course has something for everyone, whether you’re new to Claude or a seasoned AI practitioner.

About the course (detail):

This course is the result of a partnership between Anthropic and professors Rick Dakan from Ringling College of Art and Design and Joseph Feller from University College Cork. Rick and Joe developed the AI Fluency Framework in 2023-2024, based on their research exploring how AI tools like Claude were transforming creative and business processes. This collaboration has a shared vision: helping people interact with AI effectively and responsibly.

The AI Fluency Framework they created — four interconnected competencies (Delegation, Description, Discernment, and Diligence) — enables more effective, efficient, ethical, and safe human-AI collaboration, regardless of which new AI models or tools emerge. We collaborated to develop this course based on their framework, bringing together our collective expertise in AI systems, education, creativity, and business innovation. The work was supported in part by the Higher Education Authority (Ireland) through the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning.

This course establishes a foundational understanding of generative AI systems and why developing AI fluency matters for effective collaboration. It introduces the 4D Framework as a structured approach to human-AI interaction, covering core capabilities and limitations of current AI technologies and provides the conceptual grounding needed to approach AI tools strategically rather than reactively.

Additional potential offerings:

Live webinars for San Jose residents (that can also be recorded and accessed by platform users)
Examples of some related webinar topics could include:
- Interpretability: Understanding how AI models think
- Affective Use of AI ( how people use Claude for emotional support and companionship)
- The Societal Impacts of AI

OpenAI

Additional Offerings: They are also interested in offering in person trainings at the library

Main offering:

Open AI Academy > ChatGPT fundamentals – Resource | OpenAI Academy

1. Does your training require an account to be created?
  a. No account required to watch the videos; but people may have to create a ChatGPT account to sign up for some of our live webinar workshops
  b. Data Privacy: We don’t “sell” Personal Data or “share” Personal Data for cross-contextual behavioral advertising, and we do not process Personal Data for “targeted advertising” purposes (as those terms are defined under state privacy laws). We also don’t process sensitive Personal Data for the purposes of inferring characteristics about a consumer. More details here
2. How long is the training?
  a. Videos vary, but usually no more than 20-30 minutes
3. Does the user receive a certification at the end?
  a. ot at the moment; this feature will be available when we launch OpenAI Certifications early next year

ChatGPT fundamentals

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is an AI assistant that helps you think, write, and solve problems by understanding natural language and generating human-like responses in real time.

How ChatGPT works

Large Language Models (LLMs) are AI algorithms trained on vast amounts of text and other data, with the ability to predict and generate human-like language outputs based on natural language inputs. ChatGPT is built on top of these models enabling it to assist with a wide range of tasks.

Why it’s useful at work:

Saves time by letting ChatGPT draft content, code in a variety of languages, and process data all in one place
Access the power of AI using plain language without a need for special commands
Works with a variety of formats: text, images, voice, PDFs, and CSVs and more
Keeps data secure: enterprise chats are encrypted and never used for model training by default

AI For All - San José