While I agree with everything you said, I kind of liked the AI-class because it was so short and superficial. I felt it gave me a very high level overview of field without taking up too much of my time.

So while the Coursera courses are better in the sense that they cover the material in much more detail and require that you understand the material much better to do the assignments, they end up being much harder for me to squeeze into my already hectic schedule. So in the end I think there is space for both approaches.