Announcing AI Saturdays Cycle 2
TL;DR
AI Saturdays Cycle 2 will begin on 1 August 2018. Ambassador applications are now open. Apply here (website not loading? click here).
Also, cycle 2 will have an intermediate track to ensure quality and rigour for experienced learners.
Ended with a bang
AI Saturdays, affectionally known as AI6, is a structured study group aimed to enable anyone and everyone to become kickass in AI. Our pilot cycle ran from January to May 2018 and had garnered the participation of more than 5000 participants globally from over 50+ cities worldwide.
To be honest, I didn’t expect AI6 to explode to such a scale. What impressed me even more is the amazing AI6 ambassadors who volunteered time and brainpower to nurture an AI community in their city. Not to forget the cheery participants who were passionate about learning AI despite it being a difficult subject.
Approaching the end of cycle 1, I hunted down some AI6 ambassadors and participants for a chat. I talked to an asian ambassador who has a love of teaching; a determined student from a Nigerian city that lacks AI infrastructure; an enthusiastic American researcher who, despite working full time, commits to AI6 each week. Here are some of my takeaways:
- High attrition rates were the main problem —participant count in most chapters gradually dwindled to a handful. Solutions to this varies across chapters : Bangalore aims to have 70% coding and 30% theory; Barcelona introduced quizzes using kahoot.it and hands-on coding sessions; Jabalpur requires its participants to pre-read materials before each lesson to keep everyone on the same pace; Lagos inserts interactive discussion sessions in between lectures videos.
- There is an appreciation for AI6 as a global community. Posts in the AI6 Medium publication and AI6 Slack Channel has facilitated the exchange of AI knowledge, learning materials and even tips to organise study groups. The core team hopes to continue this in the next cycle.
- Catering to a diverse audience can be challenging as AI6 participants come from diverse backgrounds; they range from yoga teachers, medical practitioners, PhD students, programmers to engineering students. There will be two different tracks in the next cycle to address this problem.
AI6 2.0!
Taking into account feedback received from the pilot cycle, the core team will roll out the following to improve the learning experience in AI Saturdays. And yes, cycle 2 is still free and open for anyone to attend!
Ambassador applications are OPEN
Study groups in each city are led by local ambassadors. They are not expected to be AI experts; most importantly, they must be passionate about creating a community to learn AI together. Think that’s you? Apply here.
Everyone from AI Saturdays has a story to tell — how would you tell yours?
Level up!
Cycle 2 offers the opportunity for intermediate learners to pursue rigour and quality by participating in the intermediate track. They can choose from one or more of the following courses : UCL course on Reinforcement Learning (UCL RL), Berkeley CS294, Stanford Natural Language Processing (CS224n) and Stanford Computer Vision (CS231n).
We hope to create a community of intermediate learners on the AI6 forum, where everyone could participate in discussions to facilitate learning.
Participants and ambassadors of this track should have completed Deep learning Specialization or Fast.ai(or anything equivalent). Those who would wish to join the intermediate track but do not meet the prerequisites can catch up during the precycle (July 2018). We recommend that you use this month to complete BOTH Andrew Ng’s Machine Learning and Deep learning Specialization on coursera.
Exciting times ahead
The “perfect” time to start (or continue) your AI journey is NOW. Apply here to become an AI6 ambassador. Go get the life you want!
