Beirut AI Community Recap: May 2019
Can you believe it’s already May? We can! We have taken as many chances as possible to bring our dream of making Lebanon an AI hub into the light. Here’s how we did it this month!
Workshops
Thanks to our incredible university ambassadors this month we were able to bring our “Into the Artificial Intelligence World” workshop to many universities across Lebanon!
The workshop was divided into two parts. The first included an interactive presentation about Artificial Intelligence followed by a discussion to allow the participants to clarify any misconceptions and expand their knowledge about what already exist in the AI World.
The second part of the workshop was a two-hour hands-on Data Science project where the students were exposed to a data set that they could, clean and manipulate enough to build their first AI model. Our workshop not only explores what AI holds but shows the participants exactly how it’s possible for them, using only the resources they have, to advance in the field of AI.
Special thanks to Lebanese University (Hadath), American University of Technology (AUT), Lebanese International University (LIU), and Holy Spirit University of Kaslik (USEK) for welcoming us and exposing their students to the possibilities of AI.
Starting Swiftly: The CCECS Opportunities Fair
This may American University of Beirut’s Center for Civic Engagement and Community Service (CCECS) proudly awarded 500 students from vulnerable communities certificates for completing courses in digital skills. We took this opportunity to expose these students as early as possible to the existence of Artificial Intelligence, and to introduce them to our Applied AI community in Lebanon, and spark their interest in the field.
A TED Talk at TEDxUSJ by Alaa Maarouf
Our very own Alaa Maarouf had the incredible opportunity to give a TED Talk at TEDxUSJ. Alaa highlighted how AI can impact and change our day to day life. She also emphasized the change it will cause to the local job market as we move into this new age. Alaa also discussed our dream at Beirut AI to make Lebanon an AI hub in the region and the initiatives we are taking to make this dream a reality.
What we have in store for you?
We can’t wait to bring you Lebanon’s first AI bootcamp! If our workshops sound interesting just wait and see what we have in store for the bootcamp!
We will not only introduce Data Science, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence (and the elusive difference between the three), we will also, like everything else we do, give you the hands on experience you need to kick start your AI journey!
We will guide you through the wonderfully challenging concepts or computer vision, natural language processing (NLP), time-series analysis and recommendation systems. But, it won’t just be a high level explanation. No! From August 5th to the 10th you will end every day with the opportunity to showcase a new AI project that you will create with the new AI skills you acquire!
Interested in knowing more and keeping up to date with the latest news? Register here!
AI from Lebanon!
Seeing Lebanon make a statement in AI around the world makes us happy! This month Google awarded a team of engineers at the American University of Beirut (AUB) a million dollars to move forward with an AI solution to an agricultural problem in the region.
The project uses data from sensors and satellite imagery to calculate the needed water consumption of certain areas of crops. It aims to improve efficiency of irrigation, reduce water and energy consumption as well as costs to farmers using Artificial Intelligence.
We can’t wait to hear about and see more success stories in AI coming from this tiny but mighty place in the world we call Lebanon.
What the Community has to say about Beirut AI
In the past few months we collaborated with Berytech to give you the AI Meetups series where inspirational leaders in AI from the region gave talks about different aspects of AI.
But, don’t just hear it from us! Berytech summarized our collaborative events and their contents here.
Other Resources
As always we love to make sure you have as many opportunities to advance in your AI journey as possible. Below are some resources we believe you can benefit from.
Article:
Introduction to Automated Machine Learning (AutoML)
An interesting article about automating some steps within the model building phase of machine learning.
https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2019/05/15/introduction-to-automated-machine-learning-automl/
Competition:
Predicting Molecular Properties
A competition was posted on Kaggle.com a couple of days ago about predicting the magnetic interaction between two atoms in a molecule. Think you’ve got what it takes?
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Any topics you would like us to cover?
Drop a comment or send us an email at beirut@city.ai
For more information visit city.ai/cities/beirut.
