AI is growing interest among students
Understanding the basics of AI is starting to be part of general knowledge everyone benefits from.
Dr. Arno Solin, Assistant Professor in Machine Learning at Aalto University, sees that there is clearly a growing interest in AI among students.
“This applies to both bachelor and master level studies with majors in related fields such as machine learning and data science. However, also students in completely different fields are more and more interested in learning about AI.”
Solin teaches Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (CS-C1000) at Aalto University. Last spring over 400 students studied on that course.
According to Solin students have a strong interest in learning how things work, whether the methods can be trusted, and what the current state-of-the-art is capable of.
“As I see it, it is important to teach the students not only what AI is, but also what it is not. Understanding the basics of AI is starting to be part of such general knowledge everyone benefits from.”
The Introduction course at Aalto gives a non-technical introduction to AI. It does not require any prior knowledge on AI, university mathematics, or programming.
“Most students come there to get a first glimpse of AI, but some of the students might already be experienced data scientists or majoring in ML, and they just want to get the 'big picture' straight", says Solin.
Solin also sees his course as a possible next step to take after the Elements of AI online course. Over 500 000 people have already taken this free online course created by the University of Helsinki and Reaktor.
“After taking the Elements of AI online course, my course offers hands on exercises and opportunities to get first experiences in training real AI models and seeing them in action.”
There is clearly a fast growing interest in AI all over Finland.
“The reason for the interest in AI is simply because it is starting to become a central part of our everyday life”, says Solin.
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