Beirut AI Community Recap: April 2019
Presentations, workshops, Datathons and more! In our mission to make AI more accessible to everyone we’ve tried many mediums and we will continue to do more. But, for now, this is what April looked like for Beirut AI!
Hands-On Workshops
This month we were able to provide two workshops across two different aspects of AI. Each of these workshops provided the attendees with tools to move forward further with their interest in AI.
Rafic Hariri University (RHU) Workshop, April 5
In this introductory workshop participants were given the chance to move through a simple comprehensive AI process.
Participants were introduced to the theoretical side of AI followed by the practical. They started with a dataset and went through to the end until the model was created. They were able to create predictive models that helped them understand the concepts of machine learning better.
Thanks to our wonderful ambassadors at RHU and the RHU ACM for helping us provide this workshop.
Introduction to Internet of Things (IoT) Workshop, April 18
The number of participants in this workshop took our breath away! It was a full house and we thank everyone who attended and enjoyed it!
In this hands-on workshop, attendees got to understand how IoT and AI work hand in hand to improve the world around us. In this workshop we guided our participants through the entire Data Science process from cleaning and prepping the data, all the way to the creation of a predictive model. The participants got the chance to work with a Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) to predict future weekly levels of energy consumption based on the consumption of previous weeks.
Meetups
3rd Edition Artificial Intelligence Berytech Meetup, April 17
In the third edition of our meet-up we got three great CEOs to talk to us about challenges and opportunities of AI in business.
Anwar El-Homsi, CEO of Jainus LLC, talked to the attendees about the challenges facing the integration of AI with business. According to El-Homsi, most of these challenges and barriers lie in the unclear strategies, lack of talent, data quality and infrastructure. We also had Roy Labban, CEO of Previse AI, discuss some of the challenges present in the construction industry and how he with Previse AI is helping tackle them using AI. Last but not least, Kevin Boutros, CEO and co-founder of Quadra Machinery, introduced us to how AI changed agriculture and how Quadra Machinery ensures the quality of fruits by detecting internal and external defects.
The Datathon
One of our biggest events for the month was the International Data Science Hackathon (a.k.a the Datathon) that took place between April 12 and 14 at AUST. In the Datathon the participants were tasked with solving one of two different types of problems. We had students from universities all over Lebanon collaborating on solving either a time-series or object detection problem.
To read and know more about this event you can check our post here.
Presentations
We are honored to have been able to speak at several different venues about AI. The following are brief summaries of how what these presentations were all about.
Presentation at Lebanese American University (LAU), April 1: Thanks to the Club of Computer Science we got the opportunity to introduce AI its applications, lifecycle and methods to an engaged and enthusiastic crowd.
Presentation at Bank Audi Headquarters, April 15: An excited crowd of high-school and university students attended this introductory presentation on AI.
Presentation at JCI, April 25: We provided an introduction to AI and its lifecycle along with plenty of interactive demos of interesting AI tools and applications.
What are we up to next?
For the month of May we’re excited to announce we have three upcoming hands-on Python workshops at Lebanese University (LU) on May 6, American University of Technology (AUT) on May 13 and Lebanese International University (LIU) on May 17.
For any questions and inquiries please contact beirut@city.ai.
We Have Something Big in Store for You!
In the works is the first AI bootcamp in Lebanon!
We want to ensure that you have all the tools and skills that can get you started in the AI realm!
That’s why from August 5 till 10 we’re holding a bootcamp that will teach you the A to Z of getting started with Data Science & AI.
If you’re interested in knowing more sign up here.
Other Resources
We know we’re not the only ones who have a mission to improve and spread AI around the world and that’s why we want you to have as many chances to be involved as possible. Here are some resources that might help you expand your AI horizons.
Podcast:
Elon Musk: Tesla Autopilot by the Artificial Intelligence Podcast
This podcast is a conversation with Elon Musk about the Autopilot in Tesla.
https://lexfridman.com/elon-musk/
Competition:
Microsoft AI for Good:
The idea behind this challenge is for students, data scientists and developers to use AI to solve some of the worlds problems.
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