13-year-old Indian AI developer vows to train 100,000 coders

The youth must be equipped with coding and algorithm skills to operate Artificial Intelligence technologies that already occupy big part of modern lives, urged 13-year-old AI Developer.

Tanmay Bakshi, the youngest IBM Watson Developer and neural network architect made it his mission to reach 100,000 aspiring coders to help them innovate and learn along their journey of coding.

Speaking during the first day of the Knowledge Summit, the Indian teenager said to meet expectations and demand of AI that plays critical part of our lives, more young people are needed to work on the backend and fill up thousands of jobs that remain vacant.

"There's a lack of resources for beginners who want to elevate knowledge of coding to next level of AI and Deep Learning. While knowledge and technology itself is everywhere, the resources to use that technology isn't, so this gap needs to be filled," said Bakshi

The teenager, based in Canada, is a coach at the Fourth Industrial Revolution Organization whose goal is to teach youth specific skills identified by institute of the future for effective participation in future workplaces. So far, he has reached 5,200 young aspiring coders.

"These skills are critical to our future and we are trying to get these skills out for everyone," said Bakshi, author of textbook on the programming language called "Swift" for beginners. With hundreds of data science jobs and neural network architecture available, Bakshi said the appropriate training and skills are required to fill these vacancies.

Important of collaboration between humans and robots

Getting into AI since he was 11 and developing his first AI project at the age of 12, Bakshi started his own YouTube channel "Tanmay Teaches" six years ago to educate the youth on computing, programming, machine learning, math, science and neuro network. With over 156,000 subscribers, Bakshi filmed over 150 videos to date.

The young algorithm-ist, who built his first app for the iPhone when he was only nine, stressed on having collaboration between humans and AI in the workplace. He defied the myth that robots will ever replace humans or take away their jobs.

On the contrary, he said, AI will actually help open up hundreds of new jobs.

"AI will never overpower humans due to its ability to make naïve mistakes that humans cannot make. Since AI isn't biological and doesn't have hundreds of trillions of connections that humans have, it doesn't own enough abstract or deep enough thinking to replace humans," noted Bakshi.

At the same time, humans are also capable of making mistakes that AI would never make. "These machines have the ability to make unbiased decisions based on information it is given, which tends to be more accurate that our decisions as humans. On the long run, this will prevent massive mistakes from happening in medicine and healthcare, for example, which can impact someone's life," said Bakshi.

AI, in fact, must be used as a tool to make our lives easier. Bakshi emphasized on bringing powerful collaboration of man and machine to the workplaces worldwide, which is what "Computational Thinking" is about.

"The reason we are afraid of AI is because we aren't in the backend yet to take a look at how it works. If we are controlling it, we will be much more comfortable when we see what it's capable of doing in making our lives easier," said Bakshi. "We will have many jobs controlling and training AI because machines cannot speak for themselves."

Currently working on a book about simple beginning to Deep Learning with IBM Watson, the young author is proving his point strong by developing AI projects to improve security, business and healthcare field.

His upcoming AI projects include facial recognition systems for security, a crisis-detecting system in businesses and developing cognitive technologies to help communication among people with special needs.

Source: Khaleej Times