Course Overview
The BCS accredited Certificate in Artificial Intelligence Foundation course is our latest Artificial Intelligence training course. The course builds upon the basic knowledge of AI. Over the 3 days the course will take you from a basic understanding of AI to the ability to create your own AI product.
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Artificial Intelligence Foundation Certification incorporates and builds on the essentials certification to develop a portfolio of AI examples using the basic process of machine learning. It shows how AI delivers business, engineering and knowledge benefits.
Examples are presented; drawing on standard open source software and cloud services. Candidates will explore what is required to develop a machine learning portfolio and given access to the examples for on-going self-study
Who is it for?
Those individuals with an interest in, (or need to implement) AI in an organisation, especially those working in areas such as science, engineering, knowledge engineering, finance, or IT services.
The following broad set of roles would be interested:
Engineers; Scientists; Professional research managers; Chief technical officers; Chief information officers; Organisational change practitioners and managers; Business change practitioners and managers; Service architects and managers; Programme and planning managers; Service provide
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Entry Requirements
There are no entry requirements for this training
Exam
The exam will consist of:
- A one-hour closed book exam
- Consisting of 40 multiple choice questions
- Pass mark is 26/40
- Exam is included in the price
Course Objectives
1 Ethical and Sustainable Human and Artificial Intelligence (20%). Candidates will be able to:
- Recall the general definition of Human and Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Describe the concept of intelligent agents.
- Describe a modern approach to Human logical levels of thinking using Robert Dilt’s Model.
- Describe what are Ethics and Trustworthy AI
- Recall the general definition of Ethics.
- Recall that a Human Centric Ethical Purpose respects fundamental rights, principles and values
- Recall that Ethical Purpose AI is delivered using Trustworthy AI that is technically robust.
- Recall that the Human Centric Ethical Purpose Trustworthy AI is continually assessed and monitored.
- Describe the three fundamental areas of sustainability and the United Nation’s seventeen sustainability goals.
- Describe how AI is part of ‘Universal Design,’ and ‘The Fourth Industrial Revolution’.
- Understand that ML is a significant contribution to the growth of Artificial Intelligence.
- Describe ‘learning from experience’ and how it relates to Machine Learning (ML) (Tom Mitchell’s explicit definition).
- Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (20%)
- Demonstrate understanding of the AI intelligent agent description
- List the four rational agent dependencies
- Describe agents in terms of performance measure, environment, actuators and sensors
- Describe four types of agent: reflex, model-based reflex, goal-based and utility-based.
- Identify the relationship of AI agents with Machine Learning (ML).
- Describe what a robot is.
- Describe robotic paradigms
- Describe what an intelligent robot is.
- Relate intelligent robotics to intelligent agents.
- Applying the benefits of AI – challenges and risks (15%)
- Describe how sustainability relates to human-centric ethical AI and how our values will drive our use of AI will change humans, society and organisations.
- Explain the benefits of Artificial Intelligence
- List advantages of machine and human and machine systems.
- Describe the challenges of Artificial Intelligence, and give the general ethical challenges AI raises, along with examples of the limitations of AI systems compared to human systems.
- Demonstrate understanding of the risks of AI project
- Give at least one a general example of the risks of AI
- Describe a typical AI project
- Describe a domain expert
- Describe what is ‘fit-of-purpose’.
- Describe the difference between waterfall and agile projects.
- List opportunities for AI.
- Identify a typical funding source for AI projects and relate to the NASA Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs).
- Starting AI how to build a Machine Learning Toolbox – Theory and Practice (30%)
- Describe how we learn from data – functionality, software and hardware.
- List common open source machine learning functionality, software and hardware
- Describe introductory theory of Machine Learning.
- Describe typical tasks in the preparation of data.
- Describe typical types of Machine Learning Algorithms.
- Describe the typical methods of visualising data.
- Recall which typical, narrow AI capability is useful in ML and AI agents’ functionality.
- The Management, Roles and Responsibilities of humans and machines (15%)
- Demonstrate an understanding that Artificial Intelligence (in particular, Machine Learning) will drive humans and machines to work together.
- List future directions of humans and machines working together.
- Describe a ‘learning from experience’ Agile approach to projects
- Describe the type of team members needed for an Agile project.
Syllabus – Key points
Each major subject heading in this syllabus is assigned and allocated a percentage of study time. The purpose of this is:
1) Guidance on the proportion of time allocated to each section of an accredited course.
2) Guidance on the proportion of questions in the exam.
Darrell Eaton| Senior IT Tester| Royal Mail Group –
It was very good, slides could do with some more work, a bit wordy, would be good to see something on the slides that refers to relevant information that could be in the exam
Alistair Way | Capability Development Manager for AI and Emerging Technology | MOD –
An excellent introduction to the subject with an engaging trainer who used real scenarios and experience to add context to the course.
David Longden | Automation Developer | Ministry Of Defence –
The course tutor was very articulate and brilliant at maintaining interest in the topic.
Alex Spence –
Good foundation to help prevent fraud in this area.
A certain amount of hubris in thinking we will get to a fifth industrial revolution that is anything other than Sustainable Technology to Avoid Extinction.
It would have been interesting to know how many uk software providers have signed up to any of the organisations delivering ethical guidelines.
I found the whole course profoundly depressing, particularly when you look at the UN 17 sustainable goals, I don’t believe we are moving forward (globally) on any of the 17 goals. Just looking at the UK I can think of recent examples for each of the first 6 where we are going backwards. I don’t think AI is a silver bullet to either UK or global problems (To be fair the course does say this) I think that AI may prove to be a serious misdirection where human resource and the earth’s resources are funnelled into research areas that have little utility and may draw resource away from other critical areas that need timely action.
I thought the SWOT matrices could have been improved by putting a letter in each box. I don’t personally find them useful, particularly with the External/Internal Origin Attribute labels, as each could have a threat or opportunity.
I would not have used the word Gestalt (Gestalt is a German word. The closest translation is ‘whole’, ‘pattern’ or ‘form’.) unless it is commonly used in AI
For the VR slide I would have added, how safe they are is unknown.
I don’t like quotations on slides (personal preference) – here is something someone said, probably out of context that is being used to reinforce or validate some words that are not enough on their own.
I would have a whole slide related to 85% of AI projects won’t deliver…eg “96% of organizations face data-related problems including silos and inconsistent datasets when it comes to AI implementation.
Some 90% of companies are working on AI projects, but they are only successful one-third of the time. Databricks, 2018”
Dougie Anscombe-Stephen|Account Principal|Contino Solutions Limited –
Very broad course, appreciate this is BCS led. Rosie was very engaging, and worked very hard over virtual / lockdown circumstances to provide excellent narrative and context beyond the course materials. I’ve done a few of these types of courses, virtually or otherwise, and Rosie is up there with the best, thank goodness!
jon.cameron –
It was a great course – I have had the accompanying text book from BCS for around a year already, but decided I really needed the course to help ingest some of the subject material, which is very complex. The course material will also assist me as a foundation to investigate subject areas that I found more interesting – ML and language models for instance.
I would have preferred more references on the course slides to the relevant area of the syllabus, and some of the items are slightly out of date as this is an area of technology, but that is due to the pace at which things are changing. The course tutor was very knowledgeable, engaged the candidates as best as possible over Zoom (its better to be in a real room!), and delivered the course really well.
I think the BCS delivers great courses and text books – I have complete other BCS courses and find everything to be a at a very good standard.
stephen.miller –
A great course, very thought provoking in parts and a useful set of guidance for starting our AI programmes with in the company.
jon.cameron –
It was a great course – I have had the accompanying text book from BCS for around a year already, but decided I really needed the course to help ingest some of the subject material, which is very complex. The course material will also assist me as a foundation to investigate subject areas that I found more interesting – ML and language models for instance.
I would have preferred more references on the course slides to the relevant area of the syllabus, and some of the items are slightly out of date as this is an area of technology, but that is due to the pace at which things are changing. The course tutor was very knowledgeable, engaged the candidates as best as possible over Zoom (its better to be in a real room!), and delivered the course really well.
I think the BCS delivers great courses and text books – I have complete other BCS courses and find everything to be a at a very good standard.
stephen.miller –
A great course, very thought provoking in parts and a useful set of guidance for starting our AI programmes with in the company.