Finland Teaching Its Citizens the Basics of Artificial Intelligence

February 1, 2019 – Finland in 2017 was the first country in the European Union to create a national artificial intelligence (AI) strategy. And now it is experimenting in retraining its population to become AI proficient beginning with 54,000, about 1% of the population.

The training of a large percentage of the country’s population to learn AI began with an open AI challenge in May of 2018 involving the University of Helsinki and Reaktor, a Finnish-based technology consulting company. Together they developed Elements of AI, an online course, to teach the basics to anyone, and they then encouraged businesses and organizations within the country to get their employees to sign up. In May of last year, almost 90,000 registered, and not just Finns. They got enrollment from more than 80 other countries.

The course curriculum isn’t about coding for AI. Instead, its six segments include:

• What is AI?
• AI problem solving
• Real world AI
• Machine learning
• Neural networks
• Implications

For the country, the idea of training Finns on  AI is all about staying ahead of the competition, particularly China, the United States, and Korea.

Finland watched its high-technology leadership erode as telecommunications giant, Nokia, a company that once dominated mobile telephony, lost market share to competitors.

Being such a small country, in terms of population, it sees the need to regain technology leadership and has chosen AI as the area in which to put its educational resources and acument. By raising Finnish awareness about AI it hopes it will lead to new entrepreneurial ventures and will give its citizens a better understanding of AI risks. The target number is to have 1 million Finns become AI literate.

In addition, the country is partnering with Estonia and Sweden, its immediate neighbours, to collectively become a testbed for Europe when it comes to AI in what it calls a “sandbox environment,” where it will be able to try out new advances in the field.

A visit to the Reaktor website had me signing up for the course which is offered over six weeks averaging 5 hours of study per week, or as an at your own pace program.

As much as I write about AI, I’m sure there will be new information for me to digest, and I look forward to reporting back to you on what I learn. To become course certified I need to get at least 50% of the exercises correct.

The course recommends I study in a group with friends and colleagues, so I invite my readers to join me in taking it.

A more advanced course is planned as a sequel for the summer of 2019.