University students in any major can pursue a certificate in the fundamentals of artificial intelligence. This field has the potential to uniquely position students for the workforce of the future.
The AI Fundamentals and Applications Certificate provides students with the opportunity to learn the fundamentals of artificial intelligence, its application to real-world problems in a variety of fields, and the ethical and professional responsibilities of these technologies.
“AI is used across every employment opportunity our students see, so we wanted to do something unique and different by embedding AI training directly into the areas our students are already studying,” said Vice-Chancellor David Reed.
The certificate consists of a required foundation course, an ethics course, and courses specific to the student's university.
In EEL 3872: Fundamentals of Artificial Intelligence, students learn how to use existing applications and tools through hands-on projects. Hans van Ostrom, founding chair and associate professor in the School of Engineering Education, said students do not need any prior knowledge to take the class and can learn practical applications of AI tools.
“We looked at where and how AI is being used in industry, and the answer to that is basically everywhere,” he said. “University of Florida students will graduate and enter their careers with an understanding of the applications of AI.”
One of the projects students will work on in the new course is to use machine learning to properly identify sea turtles in photos and use those images to estimate the sea turtle's length and weight. Such applications free up biologists in the field, allowing them to spend more time and skills on research rather than data entry.
In the Ethics course, students also reflect on the moral issues arising from rapidly evolving AI technologies.
“The capabilities of new technologies such as AI and machine learning often turn out to be in some way inconsistent with the core of our social and moral endeavors,” said Duncan Purves, an assistant professor of philosophy who will teach PHI 3681: Ethics, Data, and Technology in the fall semester. “As we will all be using new technologies at some point, we want to take the time to think about what core social and moral commitments are that might be inconsistent with new technologies, and ask ourselves when and how they might be inconsistent.”
As an example, we will have students consider the fundamental question of how data and AI are used to inform predictive policing. Law enforcement can be made easier using data from where crimes have occurred in the past. However, when law enforcement agencies partner with private companies to process this data, the data can be hidden by intellectual property policies and hidden from public information. This basic question is the starting point for other conversations about policing, such as whether and when AI should be used in policing.
If students are interested in the principles of artificial intelligence but do not want to pursue a certification, UF also offers a survey course, “EGN 1935 Frontiers of AI,” in the fall semester.
