NEWS
Artificial Intelligence: the new frontier of training
Deep Learning, Machine Learning and Neural Networks have become central to the technological landscape. Spazio Chirale is on the front line.
Artificial Intelligence is undoubtedly one of today’s most discussed topics. The enormous progress made by new Machine Learning technologies is deeply influencing every sector, from Industry 4.0 to the Smart Public Administration.
The birth of Artificial Intelligence coincides with the birth of computing itself and the earliest electronic calculators: the fascination of a machine capable of performing operations — a faculty so characteristic of the human mind — has been a powerful inspiration for dreamers ever since the dawn of the discipline.
The conceptual foundations of modern neural networks go back to the 1940s, with the definition of the “Perceptron”.
The history of AI has been marked by ups and downs: every wave of enthusiasm has been followed by long periods of disillusionment, where talking about A.I. or Expert Systems was absolutely out of place in any serious business context. Does anyone still remember the so-called Fifth-generation Computer announced in the early 1990s by Japan? HAL 9000 seemed almost at our door — and then nothing. More than twenty years of media silence.
Serious research, however, kept going: the huge work done in the 1990s eventually paid off. Many of the new computing technologies are the fruit of those results. We simply got used to treating Weak Artificial Intelligence as a perfectly respectable goal. Better to proceed step by step. Some ironically called this work “Artificial Stupidity”; nevertheless, great progress was made in emulating limited faculties and domains of Human Intelligence. Automatic diagnostic systems started to outperform their human counterparts.
True, in some areas — such as computer vision — early results were not brilliant.
Then, all of a sudden, a new turning point. Neural Networks started delivering extraordinary results. Computer vision is now a routine problem; facial recognition, a commodity.
Today AI conferences are flourishing, and AI solutions seem to be everywhere. But what intelligence does the graphics chip inside my smartphone really have? Why is the relationship between Public Administration and Citizen going to improve dramatically thanks to the renewed Digital Agenda, which has now become Italy’s National Plan on Artificial Intelligence? Will we implant that same smartphone chip inside the heads of municipal bureaucrats?
The topic, in fact, is serious and fascinating. Technologies like Convolutional Neural Networks are highly effective solutions to problems that once seemed unsolvable.
Demand for professionals with skills in Machine Learning, Deep Learning and Big Data Analysis is growing steadily, even in slower markets like Rome’s, and with it the demand for new training courses.
Since autumn 2017, Spazio Chirale has added all these topics to its Advanced Professional Training offering. To date every course launched has sold out within days of registration opening, and the schedule has been doubled to keep up with demand.
Chirale has dedicated a research team and a fully equipped laboratory specifically to Artificial Intelligence and its applications in Industry 4.0 contexts. The first wave of courses covered the foundational disciplines, from Python coding to consolidated Artificial Neural Networks. Google TensorFlow was chosen as the high-level API for both teaching and experimentation. Many novelties are on the way.