Finnish tech company Reaktor and the University of Helsinki have launched ‘Elements of AI’, a free course in Artificial Intelligence.
‘Elements of AI’ consists of a series of online courses to give a snapshot of AI to users regardless of age and level of education.
“It explains what artificial intelligence is, what it can (and can’t) do, and how it affects our lives – all in easy-to-grasp terms, with no programming or complicated math required,” Reaktor said.
The course has more than 220,000 registered students, with participants coming from over 90 countries. Reaktor said the course has already trained more than one percent of the 5.5 million Finnish population. It is the most popular course ever offered by the University of Helsinki, Finland’s largest and oldest university.
The launch of the EU-wide course comes prior to Finland’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union in 2020-2021. The Finnish Presidency has worked with EU member states to reach a shared understanding of the conditions for sustainable growth. Finland has pushed the importance of future development of the single market; taking full advantage of research, development, innovation and digitalisation and investing in the competences of European citizens.
The course in available in English, Finnish, Swedish and Estonian. But Finnish leaders said they will make the course freely available in all official EU languages.
“It is vital that more and more individuals understand how different solutions work and what they can be used for,” said Ville Valtonen, Managing Director at Reaktor Education.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment of Finland has covered the €1,679, 000 cost to fund the initiative.