Belfast To Host AI Camp Aimed At Teaching Students Machine Learning Digital Skills

Queen’s University Belfast is to play host to an artificial intelligence (AI) course to provide students with the knowledge and digital skills required to create smart software and systems.

Set up by digital services and platforms provider Kainos, the AI Camp will take place at the Computer Science Centre at Queen’s University Belfast, and will span a two-week period filled with workshops and practical session on machine leaning and AI and how it can benefit people’s lives.

AI Camp

The idea behind the camp is to provide students with a grounding in the technical skills and knowledge they will need for future jobs as the market becomes more saturated with technology and the UK’s tech sector continues to grow at a healthy rate.

“I want to leave university with more than just a degree. I want to gain industry experience,” said one of the attendees Brooke Kirk, a student from Ulster Universality.

“AI Camp will allow me to learn about a new area of technology, gain new technical skills and ultimately expand on what I’ve been learning at university.”

Students can expect hand-on coding teaching relating to cutting-edge areas such as computer vision and machine learning.

The camp will then culminate with a 12-hour hackathon in which the participating students put their newly learnt skills to the test to create applications centred around AI and machine learning.

With AI being put into more real-world use beyond the confines of research labs and the hype of vendor marketing campaigns, the camp is timely with the type of knowledge and skills it wishes to impart.

“As we progress and A.I. becomes more powerful, we will see it become commonplace in everyday life, from smart homes to smart cities,” said Jake Young, also from Ulster University.

“The efficiency of everyday life will improve, and as computer systems become more powerful with the likes of quantum computing, possibilities that we may never have dreamed will become open to us. I look forward to gaining all the knowledge I can in this area at AI Camp to improve my ability to contribute to that development in the future.”

Belfast is rapidly becoming a hub for technology research and development in Norther Ireland and the rest of Britain, with Ulster University recently launching a £2 million hub for facilitating healthcare tech innovation.

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