Cork’s organisations share state-of-the-art knowledge

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the digital transition of cities and businesses. While working from home and distance learning have be­come a reality for millions of people, the limitations of digital preparedness and the lack of understanding of what certain technologies do, have been also revealed.

Therefore, multiple partnerships led by Cork’s organisations have arisen with the purpose to address this problematic and lead to a better understanding of modern technologies and how to use and leverage them. Here a few examples:

-University College Cork is currently hosting “The Elements of AI”, a free massive open online course (MOOC) developed by the University of Helsinki and the technology company Reaktor. Since its establishment, more than 545,000 people from over 170 countries have taken the Elements of AI and it now aims to be available across the EU to educate at least 1% of the EU population in AI.

In Ireland, the course will be supported by the School of Computer Science & Information Technology at UCC under the leadership of Prof. Barry O’Sullivan and Dr. Derek Bridge. The objective is, again, to deliver free AI education to at least 1% of the Irish population. In completing the course students will become familiar with many key concepts from the field of artificial intelligence. The course is open to everyone, regardless of background. All that is necessary is a way of accessing the internet. Those who complete the Elements of AI through the dedicated Irish portal will be provided with a certificate of completion from UCC.

-Tech company Dell is partnering with the Cork Institute of Technology (CIT) on a new Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform that will help students and researchers build state-of-the-art technology. The new platform powered by a new supercomputer will allow researchers to gain real-time insights into large data sets and accelerate their projects in areas ranging from manufacturing and finance to marketing and agriculture.

It will be used by researchers within the Institute for advanced AI modelling and will also be available to postgraduate students in the MSc in Artificial Intelligence. As part of the AI partnership, CIT were provided access to