Microsoft: DAT263x Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Introduction

I'm participating in the Microsoft Professional Program AI by Micrsosoft. I've already done the programs Datascience and Big data. These are also part of the Microsoft Professional Programs. I've experienced them as an easy to follow instruction based courses. There are more of these programs available that are interesting for data enthusiasts. Think about Internet of Things and Data analysis. 

The great thing about these programs is that these programs consists of high quality instructor led courses, broken in easy to digest videos, exercises, labs and quizzes on the Edx site. So every minute spare time you have you can follow a couple of videos.

The program is broken in the following courses :

• Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (AI)
• Introduction to Python for Data Science
• Essential Mathematics for Artificial Intelligence
• Ethics and Law in Data and Analytics
• Data Science Essentials
• Build Machine Learning Models
• Build Deep Learning Models
• Build Reinforcement Learning Models
• Develop Applied AI Solutions
• Microsoft Professional Capstone : Artificial Intelligence

This blogpost describes the experiences I had with the first course : Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (AI).

DAT263x Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (AI)

This course is about an introduction of AI and exists of the following parts:

• Machine learning
• Language and communication
• Computer vision
• Conversation as a platform

Machine learning is a very lightweight introduction of machine learning and not a very comprehensive overview of the different terminology like AI, machine learning and deep learning.  Very quickly the course presents Azure ML Studio with regresssion, classification and clustering.   

Language and communication is about textprocessing, an introduction to NLP and using the application in Azure LUIS (Language Understanding Intelligent Service) with intents and how to use language processing in an example. 

Computer vision is an introduction to get you starting with image processing and working with Images and Videos.

Conversation as a platform is about the bots: an introduction and how to build an intelligent bots

Final thoughts

I haven't followed the complete program yet (disclaimer alert!). The course is mostly about the products of Microsoft and is very hands-on. For a very theoretical, or an overview of AI I would rather look into another course like that of Andrew Ng on Coursera. Although I didn't participated in that specialization track yet, I think that kind of a course is more about the theory of AI. 

But, if you want to know more about the products of Microsoft and how these are related to AI, I would recommend this program of Microsoft. I've learned about products like LUIS and didn't knew before.

I'll let you know my progress in the program!

Hennie