Intel and Udacity Launch New Edge AI Program to Train 1 Million Developers

What’s New: Today, Intel and Udacity announced the new Intel® Edge AI for IoT Developers Nanodegree program to train the developer community in deep learning and computer vision to accelerate the development and deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) models at the edge by leveraging the Intel® Distribution of OpenVINO™ toolkit. Students who successfully complete the nanodegree program, estimated to take around three months, will receive a Udacity graduation certificate.

“Historically, students have learned how to build and deploy deep learning models for the cloud. With Udacity, we are training AI developers to go where the data is generated in the physical world: the edge. Optimizing direct deployment of models on edge devices requires knowledge of unique constraints like power, network bandwidth and latency, varying compute architectures and more. The skills this course delivers will allow developers – and companies that hire them, to implement learnings on real-world applications across a variety of fields.”

— Jonathan Ballon, Intel vice president and general manager, Internet of Things Group

Why It Matters: As industries like manufacturing, retail, healthcare and others increasingly develop computer vision and AI at the edge solutions for accurate and real-time insights, making sure the workforce has relevant skills to address the demands of these industries has become imperative. While the global edge computing market is forecasted to reach $8.96 billion by 2023, expanding at a compound annual growth rate of 32.6%, the workforce is not equipped to address industry demands.

“This program is part of Udacity’s commitment to provide training for 1 million developers worldwide,” said Gabe Dalporto, CEO of Udacity. “Our collaboration with Intel will open the doors for students to learn deployment of cutting-edge AI technologies at the edge and aid those with limited access to educational resources to grow in their fields.”

How It Works: To address the growing skill gap, Intel collaborated with Udacity to create the Intel Edge AI for IoT Developers Nanodegree Program. Students will have the opportunity to complete three real-world projects, each reviewed and approved by Udacity’s reviewer network. Students who successfully complete the nanodegree program will receive a certification from Udacity and have a practiioner-level skillset in delivering AI at the edge.

For those unable to commit to the full Nanodegree program, the Intel® Edge AI Fundamentals with OpenVINO™ includes a free sub-set of the content from the nanodegree program. This course does not include projects or technical mentor support, but it offers in-depth knowledge on how to develop AI solutions for the edge.

About Scholarships for the Nanodegree: In November, Intel and Udacity launched the Intel Edge AI Fundamentals Course. The top 850 students who completed the 2.5-month fundamentals course were today awarded nanodegree scholarships. Twenty five of the scholarship winners were from Women Who Code’s Portland chapter.

About Nanodegree Program: The nanodegree program will introduce students to the Intel OpenVINO toolkit, which allows developers to deploy pre-trained deep learning models through a high-level C++ or Python inference engine API integrated with application logic. Based on convolutional neural networks, the OpenVINO toolkit allows graduates to maximize application performance across a range of heterogeneous Intel architectures to deliver fast, efficient deep learning workloads. Anyone working for a company can also take advantage of the Intel DevCloud for the Edge to develop, test and run their workloads on a cluster of the latest Intel hardware and software.

Credit Picture: Intel