What Is YOUR AI Goal?
By the year 2022, 1 in 5 workers will rely on AI for day-to-day tasks. This means tremendous opportunity for anyone with AI skills.
Udacity’s School of Artificial Intelligence has officially opened our new Deep Reinforcement Learning Nanodegree program for enrollment, and in doing so, we have completed a whirlwind effort that began at Intersect back in March of this year, when our School of AI was officially unveiled to the world:
“Machine learning and artificial intelligence make us smarter. We can understand more, and make better decisions. The kind of decisions that lead to 20,000 years of progress, in the next 100 years. Smart, and ethical, applications of AI will transform the world. Udacity is educating more AI engineers than anyone else, and we’re about to double down. Today, we’re introducing the School of AI.” — Vish Makhijani, CEO, Udacity, Intersect 2018 Opening Remarks
In his opening remarks, Vish included the Deep Reinforcement Learning Nanodegree program as part of his announcement, and a TechCrunch article confirmed the program was in development:
“In a few months, Udacity will also debut a new Reinforcement Learning AI program to bring the Nanodegree total in the School of AI to four. This was built in partnership with NVIDIA, too, as well as with Unity.”
The program actually traces its origin story to a point two years earlier, as Content Lead Alexis Cook explains in her recent post:
“The arrival of this groundbreaking program is the culmination of a journey that began in March of 2016, when DeepMind’s AlphaGo stunned the world by defeating the world champion Go player Lee Sedol. As arguably the world’s most complex game, Go had long been a target for AI engineers, and this history-making victory was made possible by a branch of AI known as Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL).”
Today, anyone interested in entering the incredible world of Artificial Intelligence has the opportunity to do so, through the learning portal that is our School of AI. Upon arrival to the school’s home page, you are prompted by a simple question:
It’s actually not that simple a question, of course, but we strive to make it so by offering you clear paths to pursue, depending on your current skills and experience, and your ultimate objectives.
Whether you’re new to the field, or already a working professional, we offer you a point-of-entry. Whether you want to work at a company focused on AI, or bring new AI techniques to a company that can benefit from them, we offer tailored curriculum to support your journey. Perhaps you’re simply a future-minded thinker who sees where the world is headed, and you want to start planning ahead by adding valuable skills to your toolkit now. We’ve got programs and paths for you as well.
As noted in the following video, it is estimated that by the year 2022, 1 in 5 workers will rely on AI for day-to-day tasks. That represents a remarkable transformation of the world of work, and one that offers tremendous opportunity to anyone who possesses AI skills.
As Sebastian Thrun mentions in the video, the New York Times has recently said there are only 10,000 people in the world that are AI experts (to which Sebastian reponds: “There are more than 10,000 open roles here in Silicon Valley alone!”). An article in The Verge, which appeared not long after the New York Times one, references a study from Tencent that highlights the same concerns around demand for qualified AI talent:
“It’s well-established that talent is in short supply in the AI industry, but a new report from Chinese tech giant Tencent underscores how great the need might be. According to the study, compiled by the Tencent Research Institute, there are just 300,000 ‘AI researchers and practitioners’ worldwide, but the ‘market demand’ is for ‘millions of roles.’”
The scale of the numbers here may be larger, but the issue remains the same — the world is short on AI talent.
The Verge article goes on to highlight what Tencent sees as the problem:
“Tencent’s new ‘2017 Global AI Talent White Paper’ suggests the bottleneck here is education.”
Where Tencent sees a bottleneck, we see opportunity, and that’s where Udacity’s School of AI comes in. We’re here to provide you with valuable opportunities to take advantage of the global demand for AI talent, by learning in-demand skills through one of our programs.
Sebastian’s closing words in the video present our invitation to you:
“Enroll today, become an AI expert, and join us in this ongoing revolution to make the world a better place with AI.”
~
This post was written by Christopher Watkins, Senior Writer and Chief Words Officer, Udacity
