“Access to education is a human right”
Host universities of FCAI offer dozens of open online courses that support lifelong learning of people coming from all kinds of backgrounds.
Pia Puolakka
In 2019, Finland did something that had not been reported anywhere else in the world. It started offering education on Artificial Intelligence to all inmates in Finnish prisons.
Pia Puolakka, project manager at the Finnish Criminal Sanctions Agency, says that the agency was looking for new ways to support inmates’ education and re-skilling in the increasingly important area of AI. That is when they came up with the idea to offer the widely popular course, Elements of AI in prisons. Puolakka contacted the University of Helsinki and Reaktor, and as a result, the Elements course became accessible in all Finnish prisons.
The collaboration between the Finnish Criminal Sanctions Agency and organizations behind the Elements gave the Finnish inmates a chance to not only learn more about AI, but also improve their digital skills. “I believe that the course has also challenged their cognition – as it’s not the easiest one to take – and opened up new perspectives in terms of the future that awaits all of us,” Puolakka says.
Teemu Roos
Teemu Roos, professor and the leader of FCAI’s AI Education Program, stresses that access to education is a human right. “We have been working hard to reach out beyond the highly educated and tech-savvy audiences of typical online courses,” he explains.
Designed for non-experts and people with no background in programming or complex mathematics, Elements of AI is a great example of a massive open online course (MOOC) that anyone can take. Soon after its launch in May 2018, it became the most popular course ever offered at the University of Helsinki. Since then, it has been rated the best online AI course in the world. It is currently available in five different languages and will be translated into all official languages of the European Union. In 2019, it was selected to be part of the voluntary continuing education for officials working for the EU. The follow-up course, Building AI, will be published in 2020.
According to Pia Puolakka’s estimate, around 20 inmates have completed the course by April 2020, and for some of them the course has sparked their interest to study more. One inmate who completed Elements of AI is now studying at the Open University, with a particular interest in AI. “We also gave him the chance to visit Reaktor’s premises in Helsinki, and he gave feedback on the course and shared his ideas regarding the follow-up course.”
The initiative to launch AI education in prisons has also raised interest internationally. Two inmates who have completed Elements of AI will be featured in a new documentary on Business Insider. Puolakka will also speak about AI education in prisons, and other similar topics, in the upcoming EdTechX 2020 virtual conference.
Around the same time that Elements was launched in prisons, Puolakka took the course herself. “The most important thing that I learned was that AI will change the world and improve our quality of life in many ways; we should make the most of it,” Puolakka says.
“Everyone needs to understand what AI is in order to actively take part in and contribute to this change in the world. Understanding what underlies this type of intelligence also helps us to understand and develop our own ‘human’ way of thinking,” she adds.
Saara Halmetoja
“Programming saves your time and opens up new possibilities”
Elements of AI has been a huge international success; but host univerisities of FCAI offer also many other options for people who want to adopt new skills and study in a flexible way, and at their own pace. Aalto University and the University of Helsinki offer dozens of other open online courses, including several courses on programming.
Back in high school, Saara Halmetoja was more interested in studying languages and humanities than mathematics. However, she always found programming intriguing, and when she majored in French philology and cognitive science at the University of Helsinki, she decided to take on her first programming course. “It was made really easy because the courses were open for everyone and I could complete them at my own pace. I knew that learning programming would be beneficial,” she says three years later.
Halmetoja first completed two introductory programming courses and, right now, she is working on the more advanced Data Analysis with Python course. Alongside her Master’s studies, she works as a coordinator at Aalto University Digi Platform, which means working closely with computer scientists and AI researchers. Programming skills have made the administrative side of her job much easier.
“First of all, knowing how to analyze and make use of large amounts of data saves my time. One of my tasks is to organize events. From prospecting visitors to sending out invitations and measuring success, everything is much more efficient when I can wrangle my data with code instead of copy-and-paste – and it really enables quick data-driven decision-making. Second of all, as an added bonus, it’s easier to discuss and define admin IT process needs with people who program for their living, as I understand their work better.”
In a similar way that reading and writing are useful skills for each of us, understanding programming can benefit anyone and everyone. “It saves time, opens up new possibilities, and makes almost any job less repetitive,” Halmetoja summarizes. In the future, she hopes to gain more experience in computational data visualization.
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