Democratising AI education

How has artificial intelligence evolved over the years?

It goes back fur­ther than many peo­ple realise. Alan Tur­ing took the first steps to test a machine’s abil­i­ty to mod­el human intel­li­gence in post-war Britain and Frank Rosenblatt’s 1958 inven­tion of the per­cep­tron algo­rithm accel­er­at­ed the idea that arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) could mim­ic human think­ing. But the next tru­ly major mile­stone didn’t arrive until 1997 when IBM’s Deep Blue defeat­ed chess grand­mas­ter Gar­ry Kas­parov. The new mil­len­ni­um flared inspi­ra­tion. Hon­da launched ASIMO, a humanoid robot pur­posed to offer home assis­tance for peo­ple with mobil­i­ty issues. IBM’s new super com­put­er Wat­son was vic­to­ri­ous in the Amer­i­can quiz show Jeop­ardy and Google’s Alpha­Go became the first machine to beat a human pro­fes­sion­al at Go, a com­pli­cat­ed board game. AI is no longer just an abstract sci-fi con­cept; it is part of our every­day lives, through smart cars, robot­ic devices and vir­tu­al assis­tants such as Siri and Alexa.

What did you learn about AI in your time in academia?

I spent 29 years in acad­e­mia includ­ing 19 years as a lec­tur­er. What struck me was how lit­tle the aver­age per­son under­stands about AI and what it can and can’t do, as well as the lack of align­ment on the sub­ject between sci­en­tists, aca­d­e­mics, tech­nol­o­gy pro­fes­sion­als, busi­ness lead­ers and wider soci­ety. At its sim­plest lev­el, AI enables human inte­gra­tion with intel­li­gent sen­sors feed­ing data, pro­gress­ing to lev­els of hyper-con­nec­tiv­i­ty with­in all eco­nom­ic spheres. But nobody is explain­ing this in a way that is eas­i­ly digestible and under­stand­able or dis­pelling fears. Some peo­ple restrict AI edu­ca­tion because they try to mys­ti­fy it. They’ll charge thou­sands of pounds for cours­es they deliv­er over numer­ous weeks. We make it main­stream by deliv­er­ing the same infor­ma­tion in a high­ly engag­ing, fea­ture-length cin­e­mat­ic film. We’re democ­ra­tis­ing AI edu­ca­tion and we’re the only ones doing it in this for­mat, part­ly because nobody else has the courage to do it.

Why is it so important that people are better educated on AI?

A big ques­tion is how we sup­port and pro­tect peo­ple as the AI rev­o­lu­tion explodes. As cloud com­put­ing takes over the world of data, the work­place is no longer in one phys­i­cal loca­tion, it is atom­ised and scat­tered. The puz­zle of co-ordi­nat­ing prod­uct qual­i­ty, ser­vice and oper­a­tions, and work­er per­for­mance in the AI era, will need a new map of clues, dra­mat­i­cal­ly chang­ing man­age­ment styles from tra­di­tion­al top-down struc­tures to decen­tralised and remote-work­ing prac­tices. AI is inter­weav­ing into our lives in ways we would nev­er have imag­ined; peo­ple need to under­stand its impact.

A lot of people fear AI will steal their jobs. Are they right to have these concerns?

A pow­er strug­gle is in the process of erupt­ing as a shift towards automa­tion and pre­dic­tive sys­tems will dis­place work­ers. Those car­ry­ing out roles that can large­ly be auto­mat­ed may feel they are los­ing pow­er, while incom­pre­hen­si­ble vol­umes of pow­er will be placed in the hands of oth­ers. Our AI jour­ney must be clear­ly mapped out. AI can­not be left to dri­ve its own train of progress. Its flex­i­bil­i­ty gives every­one the free­dom to steer it in dif­fer­ent direc­tions. The des­ti­na­tion must be clear from the onset, with a soci­etal sat nav of direc­tions. This is why democ­ra­tis­ing AI edu­ca­tion is so vital.

What films do you have in the pipeline to achieve that democratisation?

Vis­i­tors to our web­site can now rent our first film The Quest for Super Intel­li­gence. The cin­e­mat­ic edu­ca­tion­al expe­ri­ence pro­vides a com­pre­hen­sive view of the evo­lu­tion, risks and chal­lenges to imple­ment AI in busi­ness­es and for the ben­e­fit of soci­ety. We explore how intel­li­gence is evolv­ing to mim­ic us as humans, the fears of automa­tion, the new skills required, the plat­forms avail­able, and issues around employ­ment, diver­si­ty and inclu­sion. Released in Jan­u­ary, our sec­ond film The Lord of the Blocks: Blockchain Unchained, direct­ed by Dr Chris­t­ian de Var­ta­van, takes view­ers back to a medieval set­ting of cas­tles, wiz­ards and knights to explain this rev­o­lu­tion­ary new tech­nol­o­gy. We are plan­ning sev­er­al more films with engag­ing sto­ries to demys­ti­fy new tech­nolo­gies. Our mis­sion is to inspire and help enthu­si­as­tic peo­ple enjoy learn­ing from the com­fort of their home. Data­Work­out will direct­ly con­tribute to devel­op­ing the skills of the future work­force through enter­tain­ing “edu­films” that spark inno­va­tion.

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it dataworkout.com/SuperAI

Pro­mot­ed by Data­Work­out