Amazon recently encouraged its workforce to take AI-themed certifications. Since there are 3 certifications to choose from (“AWS Certified AI Practitioner”, the “AWS Certified ML Engineer Associate” and “GenAI Developer Professional”), I decided to really test myself by taking the most advanced one without any preparation besides the fact that I am an AI/ML Specialist at AWS. AWS was reimbursing the $300 exam fee, so I figured: let me see if this certification actually tests what matters in real customer conversations. here are my thoughts:

What does one expect from a Certification?

  • Ideally a certification should reflect that someone can actually architect and build the applications he claims to be certified for
  • Hereinby lies the tradeoff: are emphasizing theory or practice?
  • Should any of these questions be answered closed-book?

Observations on Certifications:

  • The questions are multiple choice - Real-life scenarios typically have more than 4 options.
  • During the exam, you don’t have access to the AWS Console, AWS Documentation or rather your favorite AWS MCP Server in your favorite GenAI Assistant
  • The GenAI space is rapidly evolving and AWS and the broader ecosystem constantly launching new services and features. I don’t know how fast a certification organization can keep up.
  • Lots of questions in the test are not reflective of what’s required in real-life: test some either niche scenario or some feature that one can look-up in 5 minutes.

Take-aways:

  • I was able to pass the test with little actual test specific preparation (this is either good or bad)
  • Real-life hands-on experience building GenAI applications does translate in some theoretical understanding

My recommendation, skip the actual cert if its your money, and take the practice test for free on SkillBuilder. This will give you a good idea of what real-life scenarios look like and try to re-implement some of the architectures: this would be a better way to learn than just passing a certification. And unlike a certification, you will learn to ship something real doesn’t expire.