Free online AI Technology course is open to everyone - Helsinki University in Finland


Helsinki University in Finland has launched a course on artificial intelligence -- one that's completely free and open to everyone around the world.
Unlike Carnegie Mellon's new undergrad degree in AI, which the institution created to train future experts in the field, Helsinki's offering is more of a beginner course for those who want to know more about it.

A lot of tech giants like Google now have divisions working on artificial intelligence projects, and even whole non-tech industries already depend on AI for various tasks.
But as Janina Fagerlund from the university's project partner (tech strategy firm Reaktor) said, people might not know that their lives are already affected by AI every day.

Fagerlund mentioned the use of AI in the food industry to sort produce and other items at facilities as an example. And while you know that Facebook uses AI for facial recognition, a lot of people might not.
Indeed, Helsinki's course focuses on the basics, starting with defining what AI is and explaining how it can solve problems.
The materials also discuss how AI is already used in the real world, and in the second part of the course, they explain how machine learning works and what neural networks are.

It will apparently take you about 30 hours to complete the course, which can earn you two academic credits through the Open University if you're from Finland. If you live elsewhere, you'll just have to make do with a certificate you can display on LinkedIn.

Link to Course

https://www.elementsofai.com/

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/finnish-university-apos-online-ai-193100583.html

The course, which went live this week, has no prerequisites, is free of charge and open to anyone around the world.

Fagerlund participated in the creation of the course and says it is meant to dispel the mystery surrounding the technology and raise discussion about it, as well.

"We want to show that there's nothing particularly remarkable about AI, it's just about different ways of solving problems," she explains.

She also says there's no uniform definition of what, exactly, artificial intelligence is, apart from the terms "artificial" and "intelligent."

She says the technology is created by programmers and - unlike traditional computer programs - devices are programmed to carry out tasks, but then AI-powered machines are able to teach themselves how to do those tasks better - autonomously.

She says the tens of thousands of people who've already enrolled in the course are from all demographic groups.

"The fact is that we have 24,000 enrolees in the course and when we looked at who was signing up, we saw that they're from every age group, from people below the age of 20 up to 75 year-olds. They are professors, the unemployed, day care workers and dentists - people with very different backgrounds," she says.

But despite their differences, the new students of AI share common motives, she says.

"Everyone wants to learn what AI is because they think it will be a big deal in the future. They want to know how AI will affect their lives and how they can make use of it," Fagerlund says.

For her own part, Fagerlund hopes that major societal problems such as carbon emissions could be addressed with the help of AI.

Link to the Course Site

https://www.elementsofai.com/