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Category: education

That will require widening of the locations where AI is done. The vast majority of experts are in North America, Europe and Asia. Africa, in particular, is barely represented. Such lack of diversity can entrench unintended algorithmic biases and build discrimination into AI products. And that’s not the only gap: fewer African AI researchers and engineers means fewer opportunities to use AI to improve the lives of Africans. The research community is also missing out on talented individuals simply because they have not received the right education.

If AI is to improve lives and reduce inequalities, we must build expertise beyond the present-day centres of innovation, says Moustapha Cisse.

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That is changing. This month fast.ai, an education non-profit based in San Francisco, kicked off the third year of its course in deep learning. Since its inception it has attracted more than 100,000 students, scattered around the globe from India to Nigeria. The course and others like it come with a simple proposition: there is no need to spend years obtaining a phd in order to practise deep learning. Creating software that learns can be taught as a craft, not as a high intellectual pursuit to be undertaken only in an ivory tower. Fast.ai’s course can be completed in just seven weeks.

Treating it like a craft is paying dividends.

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The future of humanity will be radically different than what we see today. As Ray Kurzweil put it, “We won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century—it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today’s rate).” We’ll have the potential to live on Mars, connect our minds to machines, and access an abundance of resources.

But is our youth prepared to live in such a world? Are we equipping them with the skills and values necessary to be adaptable, innovative, and purpose-driven in such a world?

Our traditional, industrial-era educational models are simply outdated. What is required is not an incremental change in education, but rather an entire overhaul of the current system. It will take creative imagination to develop new models for 21st-century education.

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The federal government has announced the appointment of Australia’s first Women in STEM Ambassador, with Professor Lisa Harvey-Smith charged with overseeing the country’s attempt to diversify its science, technology, engineering, and mathematics sectors.

An astrophysicist professor, Harvey-Smith will specifically advocate for girls and women in STEM education and careers, aiming also to raise awareness in the male-dominated industry and drive cultural and social change for gender equity.

SEE: The state of women in computer science: An investigative report [PDF download] (TechRepublic cover story)

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Authorities in China’s far-western Xinjiang region appear to have officially legalized so-called re-education camps for people accused of religious extremism, a little more than a month after denying such centers exist.

The Xinjiang government on Tuesday revised a local law to encourage “vocational skill education training centers” to “carry out anti-extremist ideological education.”

Human rights organizations have long alleged the Chinese government has been detaining hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs — a Turkic-speaking, largely Muslim minority native to Xinjiang — in such centers as part of an effort to enforce patriotism and loyalty to Beijing in the region.

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It is important to know why a program does what it does. This is not a mystery, technology is a tool and that tool is only as good as the human who created it.

You always have to know why a program, makes the decisions that it makes. No program or Algorithm will be perfect, that is the main issue that Lisa Haven brings forward. You also have to make sure of the reason for the error whether it is innocent or intentional or even criminal.

That is the problem when you blindly allow technology to rule the day. Anyone from an old-school management upbringing will tell you, never to allow technology to govern your decisions on its own. You always have to know why, where, and how on your decisions.

It is important to get this kind of technology right. Everyone wants a shortcut, instead of doing the hard work to ensure that information being put forward is correct.

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