
Elements of AI course to be made available in all EU languages - Anchor
https://www.elementsofai.com/eu2019fi
======
tekkk
Well.. it is nice, I guess, but really dumbed down version in my opinion to
actually be of practical use. Sure it's great publicity for Reaktor and
Finland and whatnot, but I'm dubious of its actual benefits. Teaching basic
statistics would be much more useful than "AI", but I guess it lacks the hype
factor so marketing-wise it wouldn't just be as cool.

It's as if there wasn't enough of snake oil salesman promoting their business
as "AI-powered" already. And what AI does even mean in current context? A bag
of machine learning algorithms? I always likened AI to be more of general AI
rather than how it's nowadays labelled.

~~~
weego
being AI is a way for ML startups to get triple the seed capital. Nothing
more.

I would argue against this course having no benefits. There is a huge
disconnect between what the reality of the near-future in tech is and what the
media mis-represent it to be, often fuelled by interviews and quotes from the
people directly benefiting from stoking the fire.

The general populace being much closer to a position to understand that it's
actually largely unrealistic or nonsense is the right way to go about bridging
the gap between the "tech class" and your average lay person.

I definitely agree that society in general would be better if people had
better grasp of statistics and how they are manipulated and mis-represented to
them, but there are so many interest areas that people would be better off for
having some understanding of that I don't think any one can be discredited
just because it's not one of the others.

------
pasiaj
Elements of AI was created as a collaboration by University of Helsinki, the
Finnish government and Reactor Innovations, a software consultancy.

It was well received by the Finnish general populace.

The Finnish government currently acts as the EU presidency, and decided to
open access to all Europeans.

~~~
jotm
That's great, it would be even better if it was open to everyone, you know, in
line with EU values (democracy, education for all, freedom, etc.) :/

~~~
anttipoi
It is. You're free to start learning.

Today's announcement means more translations in European languauges.

------
hombre_fatal
The comments here are surprisingly negative. So many wet blankets, from people
saying the offering sucks to people mistakenly complaining about it being EU-
only to someone saying it empowers just white europe.

I wonder how many people criticizing it even planned on trying this
completely-free course.

I think we really need to work on pulling the plug on this fetishization of
contrarianism as a community.

~~~
verttii
A lot of Finnish taxpayers' money was spent developing it. I think it's fair
to criticize its shortcomings openly.

~~~
pergadad
Uninformed nonsense.

Its Finnish EU PRESIDENCY, which means it's paid by the EU budget.

Each EU country holds the rotating EU presidency for six months, which means
they chair interministerial meetings, formally negotiate and propose
compromise legal texts, etc. In this role the presidency receives a budget for
promotional events, communication efforts, etc. The Finnish presidency decided
to use part of the budget for this translation effort.

This seems to fit various EU goals well, eg to upskill the population, promote
digital competences and encourage use of all 24 EU languages. Think of just
the added value of having common terminology and definitions.

~~~
verttii
For the record, here is the press release about it from the Ministry of
Economic Affairs and Employment of Finland:
[https://tem.fi/en/article/-/asset_publisher/suomi-
investoi-e...](https://tem.fi/en/article/-/asset_publisher/suomi-investoi-
eurooppalaisten-tulevaisuustaitoihin-tavoitteena-kouluttaa-prosentti-eu-
kansalaisista-tekoalyn-perusteisiin)

Quote from the press release: _The cost of the initiative, a total of 1 679
000 euros, will be funded from the budget of the Ministry of Economic Affairs
and Employment of Finland._

------
jacknews
Only in English, Swedish, Finnish, Estonian?

At least the language dropdown seems to be intelligable in all languages.

Compared to getting stuck in google maps in, say, Russia, where even the
'change language' menu item is in Russian, so of course you can't even find it
to change to English unless you can read Russian, or happen to know where itt
is already.

~~~
jacquesm
As opposed to 'just English' which is more or less the norm in start-up land?

~~~
jacknews
startup land is silicon valley, usually targeting the US.

An AI course targeted at Europe should at least include German, French,
Spanish, etc.

~~~
pelliphant
Why? Sure, it would be nice with more languages, but if someone from
germany/france/spain want's to learn study AI, isn't it probable that they are
used to reading english anyway?

~~~
toolslive
You would think that, but I've seen Germans with a PhD that don't speak
English. Once a language is large enough, most things get translated into that
language (as there is a market for it). Anyway, German and French are large
enough, Dutch isn't.

~~~
anoncake
I've never encountered a single AI or CS paper translated to or written in
German. You may not need to speak English for a PhD in, say, law, but you
can't be a competent computer scientist only knowing German.

~~~
pjmlp
You need to search harder, I guess.

As someone that graduated during the 90's, and had graphics programming as one
of my main focus, there were plenty of German only papers out of Darmstadt.

We had a couple of proceedings books with them on our university library.

------
enriquto
This title has been misleadingly edited, removing a crucial word.

In the linked article, it states that the course will be available "in all
official EU languages", which is indeed the case. The word "official" has been
removed from the title, thus giving a very different indication of the actual
set of languages in question.

------
Havoc
If I'm German but want English lang which do I select? There is one selector
for both

~~~
nebulous1
OP oddly linked to the page where you sign up for languages that they haven't
released yet. Just go to the home page and select English.

------
purple-again
Can we change the title to soon free for all or soon available in all EU
languages? As you can tell from the comments here the title is unnecessarily
divisive and doesn't seen to jive with what the website says or the Finnish
governments intentions:

Quote from website: "The Finnish Presidency of the Council of the EU has
decided to invest in people’s future skills and will make the Elements of AI
online course freely available in all official EU languages."

~~~
Anchor
Makes sense. Changed from "Elements of AI course soon free for all EU
citizens" to "Elements of AI course soon available in all EU languages".

------
3guk
Nice to see that they've already removed the UK from the list of European
countries.....

~~~
SebaSeba
That's just because the course already exists in english
[https://www.elementsofai.com/](https://www.elementsofai.com/)

------
pjmlp
I just look forward to see Portuguese from Portugal being offered and not
another variant.

------
enriquto
I wonder if there is a rationale for this particularly strange selection of
languages. They propose, for example, Irish (Gaelic), which is the native
language of about 80.000 european citizens and is understood by about a
million. Yet they do not propose Catalan, which is the native language of 4.1
million and understood by about ten million.

As a staunch partisan for the unity of the EU, and native Catalan speaker, I
cannot but feel dismay about this continuous lack of tact from my
institutions. I know this is due to ignorance more than malice, but it really
looks as if the institutions are purposely shadowing our very existence.

~~~
MartianSquirrel
I could be mistaken, but it seems like they translated it in EU countries
official languages, which is why Irish is present but not Catalan.

~~~
enriquto
Yes, it seems to be this. I hope this is a default list of languages, and more
languages may be added if requested.

~~~
pelliphant
Ok, I can understand that it sucks that your language is excluded, but I think
it would make way more sense to try to get your language recognized as an
official eu language instead of critizising a finnish project for limiting
their selection to official eu languages.

With that said, if catalan was added, would you actually use that instead of
english for a course like this?

~~~
enriquto
> it would make way more sense to try to get your language recognized as an
> official eu language instead of critizising a finnish project for limiting
> their selection to official eu languages

I agree 100% with this. My intention is not to criticize the organizers of
this course that made a very reasonable choice. The problem here is the rather
absurdl (in my view) selection of official EU language. It would make more
sense to me to declare English the sole official language of the union. This
would not favor any big country now that the UK is out.

> With that said, if catalan was added, would you actually use that instead of
> english for a course like this?

Of course! I use all my software localized into catalan, even vim! Now, for
technical documentation it is rare to find much in my language, almost
everything is in english only. If this (quite serious) course was translated I
would be even happier to follow it (but I might do it anyway if it was english
only, as I'm used to it).

------
anticensor
Why is Turkish (one of the two national languages of Cyprus, one of the
recognised minority languages in BiH) missing?

~~~
skissane
Turkish is not an official language of the EU.

Not every national language of EU member states is an EU official language.
Luxembourgish and Turkish are national languages of Luxembourg and Cyprus
respectively but are not EU official languages.

EU official languages are specified by the EU treaties. In cases of
enlargement, they are negotiated between the EU and the acceding state. When
Cyprus joined the EU, Cyprus and the EU agreed that Turkish would not be added
to the list of EU official languages.

(Also, the fact that Turkish is a minority language in BiH is of little
relevance. BiH is not an EU member state, and most minority languages of EU
member states are not EU official languages either.)

------
PunchTornado
people would say what's the point of this if every programmer knows English.
People who say this never worked in Italy or Spain.

I was surprised when I worked in Milan how little English my fellow teammates
spoke.

------
meitham
UK isn't listed though we haven't left the EU yet! Damn Brexit!

------
happppy
dropdown in footer to select country and language has white background with
white text.

------
tomcooks
Country and language in a single drop-down menu, because in 2020 it's
improbable that people born outside of a country speak any other language than
their native tongue. Right?

~~~
microcolonel
It's the EU. You're not a full citizen (in the social sense) until you know
the native language of your country of residence. How Czech are you if you
can't hear the cabbies ripping you off?

~~~
qwerty456127
Regardless to what country I was born in and what country I am a citizen of
(by the way there are many full citizens who don't speak the language of the
country particularly well, there is no such a thing as non-full citizenship,
you either are a citizen or you are not) I have never wanted to study in its
language (let alone use localized versions of coding-related software which I
perceive as utter bullshit), wherever English is available I always choose to
study and to interact with a computer in English. I'd never hire an AI/IT
engineer who is not good at reading/writing/speaking on the subject in English
and I doubt I'm alone in this. Arguably being able to efficiently communicate
on the subject in English is even more important than the knowledge of the
subject itself as nobody can know everything and be a good developer without
being able to google things quickly.

~~~
microcolonel
> _interact with a computer in English_

I mean, there's no other language appropriate for working with modern
computers (Russian is probably the closest second)[0], but the level of
English computer programs require of you, especially cushioned ones like
they're exposing to people in this case, tends to be less than native
understanding of the language.

[0]: English has a huge advantage because typesetting, typewriting,
liberalism, and empire had already greatly simplified the writing system by
the time computers were standardizing. It was, from the start of electronic
computing, basically trivial to typeset English with simple character series,
in a readable form. Anglo typewriting and typesetting conventions were already
such that monospaced typewritten ASCII makes decent documents on its own.

------
jotm
Kind of off-putting... EU only, really?

Also "English (Ireland)" heh

For everyone else, use a VPN, I doubt they check anything.

~~~
anttipoi
It is completely free, globally. This announcement was more about
translations, really.

~~~
jotm
Ah OK, I see here that anyone can sign up (for the English course)
[https://course.elementsofai.com/](https://course.elementsofai.com/)

I guess it's just that landing page :)

