Cupertino Robotics First AI Workshop
After the AI Workshop Series was announced, I got really excited about it because I’d always wanted to get into AI but had never been able to because of its sheer complexity and lack of resources. I honestly couldn’t wait to get introduced to such a useful and interesting field of computer science.
The workshop was all about explaining what exactly AI was, its history, recent developments in the field, the future, and how we were all going to get involved in it. In short, it acted as a sort of introduction to a larger year-long series of AI workshops where we would be doing what I actually expected. The presenters, Mokshith (Club Vice President) and Abhinav (Club President), explained to us that we wouldn’t be writing code the first meeting because there was so much to understand before doing that. They explained that it was absolutely meaningless to write that code if you hadn’t understood it. This first workshop served as an introduction to the entire series.
The workshop itself was great. Mokshith and Abhinav are both naturally gifted public speakers, and the presentation was very well done. Both of them explained each slide very well and answered questions with full detail, making the entire experience more immersive. In the span of 40 minutes, they gave a detailed overview of AI’s past, present, and future. Starting with what exactly distinguishes humans and robots, the presentation wound its way into the pros and cons of each, and then slowly introduced the concept of AI vs. a regular robot. We then learnt about when this concept of AI first became so hot, and how it’s been developing ever since. The various types of AI development were then introduced, as well as their subdivisions and an overview of each.
The presentation concluded with where exactly AI is right now and where it’s going to be leading, as well as how we can get involved and where the series of workshops would be going. Adding in the live practical demo of the Jetson running a CV face detection program on the front row of seats was the icing on the cake, getting us more involved in what we were learning about. I had a great time at the workshop and expect to be attending the entire series of meetings.
