Finland's Ambitious Plan To Teach Anyone the Basics of AI (technologyreview.com)

In the era of AI superpowers, Finland is no match for the US and China. So the Scandinavian country is taking a different tack. From a report: It has embarked on an ambitious challenge to teach the basics of AI to 1% of its population, or 55,000 people. Once it reaches that goal, it plans to go further, increasing the share of the population with AI know-how. The scheme is all part of a greater effort to establish Finland as a leader in applying and using the technology.

Citizens take an online course that is specifically designed for non-technology experts with no programming experience. The government is now rolling it out nationally. As of mid-December, more than 10,500 people, including at least 4,000 outside of Finland's borders, had graduated from the course. More than 250 companies have also pledged to train part or all of their workforce.

Comments

Re:Lots of Math, Nothing New

[Tom]

I had a keen interest in AI around 15 or so years ago. Experimented with some early backpropagating neural networks, checked on the progress of the CyC project, read a couple of the influential books on the field. Then I saw it wasn't going anywhere and put my interests in other places.

Some years ago, machine-learning and "deep learning" were suddenly big, big things. Didn't have the time to dive into it. When a little later I did because everyone was still talking about it, I thought they had found a new breakthrough approach. Picture me surprised when I discovered it's basically 20 year old ideas, just on fast computers.

And they still sometimes recognize the weather instead of the tanks (if you get that joke, you are really old).