Artificial Intelligence: My First Encounter
Week 1: AI6 Ilorin
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the ability of a computer’s program or a machine to think and learn. It involves the development of ‘learned’ machines, thinking and working like human beings.
For many reasons, I used to think AI represented just about everything an intelligence agency would need to effectively execute their super-cool assignments — from smart spy costumes, to bazooka briefcases and eyeglasses that interact with satellites to take out unsuspecting douchebags with missiles.
I’m a newbie in the world of tech. My coding journey practically started in September, 2019 after I incidentally attended a tech event. It all started with an article about technology in the Nigerian perspective. And then, I got curious. Before I knew it, I was enclosing ‘Hello World’ in HTML tags. I wanted more, and was voraciously consuming all the knowledge I could get my hands on. And so, the night I discovered AI Saturdays on a WhatsApp status update, I eagerly jumped on the wave. Curiosity brought me here, although laced with ignorance. In my mind, I was about to learn some cool CIA stuff on a platter of gold.
While I’m not completely wrong, it however became clear that AI is not limited to the superheroes in suits and their secret tech. Artificial Intelligence is being extensively used in various areas including education, business, law and so on.
AI Saturdays (Ilorin): My First Day
AI Ilorin is a community of techies committed to impacting people with the knowledge of Artificial Intelligence. AI Saturdays however, is a 14-week training on AI — our scope being ‘Introduction to Python/Machine Learning’.
Truth be told, they had me at Introduction to Python, because before then I’d failed miserably to learn the backend language on my own.
I was 3 hours late on my first day, and surely I struggled with grasping everything that was being spewed from the podium our tutor stood behind. The projector displayed slides on things my brain could not comprehend. Who sent me work?
A computer program is said to learn from experience E with respect to some class of tasks T and performance measure P, if its performance at tasks in T, as measured by P, improves with experience — Tom Mitchell.
Another thing that successfully overwhelmed me was the perceptible testosterone I encountered on my arrival. More than 75% of those in attendance were males, and while that shouldn’t ever be a factor, I couldn’t help but feel out of place. There were the ladies of course, but I could tell most of the few present already had academic backgrounds in Computer Science or other related fields. The way they were tearing questions being thrown at them both challenged and inspired me, a microbiologist turn makeup artist and amateur Medium writer.
I was already at a disadvantage for coming late. There was no way I could ever have known the definition for a neural network (I know now). Everyone was collecting something called the Anaconda. Apparently, it had a Spyder and a whole new world, literally, called Jupyter, where all our work would take place. I, notorious for asking the most questions, started barraging the unlucky young men beside me. And luckily for me, they were a tad more receptive than I expected. And so I put pen to paper and started learning and unlearning what I could.
There and then, I discovered there was so much more to AI.
AI is the future. It can be applied into a lot. Siri, Tesla, Netflix, Echo are all applications of Artificial Intelligence; Leo of UBA is another great example of AI.
Machine Learning is a subset of AI that incorporates several fields of learning such as Biology, Statistics, Engineering, Databases, Economics, Visualization and Signal Processing. (I remember cringing at the fact that I’m only familiar with Biology).
Machine Learning describes a computer’s ability to train on a set of data and then create rules from that data. Deep Learning, however is a subset of Machine Learning.
The class finally came to an end, with an assignment on Markdown. One week down, 13 weeks to go. I hope I’m stubborn enough to persevere.
