An intensive program on reinforcement learning brought together 60 international participants, including students, researchers and industry professionals, at Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman’s (UTAR) Sungai Long Campus.
This four-day program, called “Open-Minded Winter School,” was UTAR’s first introduction to reinforcement learning.
Reinforcement learning, a core subfield of artificial intelligence (AI), is a machine learning technique in which a robot or AI program interacts with its environment and learns to make decisions using trial and error to maximize long-term benefits.
An example of the use of reinforcement learning is in displaying online advertisements that are programmed to reach specific audiences.
It is also used to study stock market patterns to develop better investment strategies.
The event was co-hosted by Canada-based Open Minds Institute (ORI), UTAR, AI Malaysia and Universiti Malaya (UM).
It was supported by AI Singapore, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, and ASEAN Academy of Engineering and Technology.
The Winter School was sponsored by Silverlake Axis, Berjaya Corporation, Science and AI Research Foundation (SAIR), and Oriza Holdings.
A keynote address titled ‘Reinforcement Learning: Empirical and First Principles-Based AI’ was delivered virtually by ORI co-founder Professor Richard Sutton, and a live ‘Ask Me Anything’ session was also held.
Considered the father of reinforcement learning, Sutton received the 2024 Association for Computing Machinery Turing Award for his contributions to the development of concepts and algorithms.
During the program, participants gained insight from ORI founders Randy Goebel and Joseph Modail about the evolution of AI, research advances, and real-world applications.
Professor Chee Seng Chan from UM was also present and introduced Malaysia’s first Multimodal Large-Scale Language Model (MLLM). MLLM is an algorithm that can understand and generate content in a variety of formats across text, images, video, and audio.
Divided into two segments, the first segment featured lectures and hands-on lab sessions from experts from ORI and the University of Alberta.
The other part consisted of seminars by researchers from Google and Eindhoven University of Technology, among others.
Topics ranged from core algorithms to the evolution of AI challenges, MLLM-based agents, and the future of autonomous systems.
Participants also had the opportunity to implement what they learned when implementing algorithms on quadruped robots, first through simulation and then directly into hardware.
A lively robotics competition was held with tutorials led by ORI’s Dr. Sorina Lupu.
In his closing remarks, UTAR Chairman Datuk Prof Dr Ewe Hong Tat reflected on the success of the program in promoting open-minded cooperation and academic exchange.
Prof. Ewe expressed his heartfelt gratitude to the organizers, partners, sponsors, and participants and emphasized that he is confident that the connections made and ideas generated during the program will continue to inspire and advance the AI community.
“UTAR celebrates the great success of the first Openmind Winter School, which created a dynamic platform for knowledge exchange and professional networking across the AI research community.
“Based on the momentum and impact of the program, plans are already underway for future editions,” he said.
