Erdos Research Labs: An AI first educational institution for domain experts(non developers) to learn AI

Hello all

Firstly, we reached 85K subscribers to this newsletter (In 2.5 years and 145 editions).?

Thanks for your support as ever.?

Today, I am going to share something special that I have been developing here for some time.?

You can sign up for a free pilot below if it appeals to you.?

Like most of my work, this is also a spinoff from my teaching at the #universityofoxford.

Background

The Erdos research labs has been a passion project for me.?

The Erdos Research Labs aims to create an "AI first" institution based on collaboration, research, inclusivity and intelligent conversations

In a nutshell - to summarise in one paragraph

"Erdos Research Labs rethinks education from an "AI first " perspective. We empower domain experts (non developers) to learn coding and AI.

We achieve this objective through a number of techniques, methodologies and systems developed by Ajit Jaokar in his teaching at the University of Oxford

According to the Venture Capitalist Vinod Khosla, in the next decade we will see a billion programmers all "programming" in natural language: The "craft" of coding would be commoditized and the entire field would be opened up to those without the classic CS degree.

The Erdos Research labs aims to leverage this trend by creating an "AI first" institution based on collaboration, research, inclusivity and intelligent conversations. We also embrace a social cause. We will always educate teachers in AI for free globally."

Who is it for??

The overall objective was to

1. Make a difference?
2. democratise AI education and?
3. create a viable institution.?

For the longest time, I struggled with the idea of who this institution is for and its structure?

After almost a year, the answer was inspired by two sources

Firstly, a prediction from the VC Vinod Khosla in a decade we will see A billion programmers all "programming" in natural language: The "craft" of coding would be commoditized and the entire field would be opened up to those without the classic CS degree. We (at Oxford) are following this trend very closely - especially with our #lowcode course which combines #generativeAI for learning to code.

The second inspiration was work of two of our students in the low code course. Dr. Amit Chougule DPM,MD,MRCPsych is a medical doctor? based in Cambridge and Magnus Smarason is a fire service professional from Iceland. They had both tried to learn coding - but with a? combination of low-code and generative AI approach at our course at Oxford, they managed to develop complete applications for their respective fields. You can see their feedback here Dr Chowgule and Magnus Smarson

?

So, the idea is: The Erdos Research Labs works with domain experts who want to learn data science based on? low code + gen AI + working with expert knowledge. ?All based on new styles of learning which we have been piloting in my work at the university of oxford.?They are typically not necessarily developers

How does it work?

Consider the idea of democratising AI for non-developers i.e. making AI and coding?

If you were to learn to code today (or for that matter, learn AI or software development) - would you start in the same way as a year ago? (Pre GPT)

I suggest not

Traditionally, you would start with coding and a ‘’hello world’ like process.?

However, we believe today, you would take a different approach using

1. Generative AI to assist coding
2. Agents to explore domain knowledge?
3. Undertake a use case driven approach with creativity/end to end thinking
4. Collaborate with the best researchers in AI to product a project related to your interest or publish the work?
5. Consider Generative AI in conjunction with product discovery and Test driven development.

Also, coding with natural language is not enough.

You would need to combine natural language combines with domain specific background making it applicable to Medical(doctors); Legal (lawyers); Engineers( mechanical or electrical engineers); Business and finance(Accountants, Human Resources, Sales); Creatives;Researchers; Tourism and Hospitality;? Agriculture, Media professionals; Transportation and Logistics; manufacturing; retail; environmental etc

To implement this, apart from my course at Oxford, we are working with Microsoft and Neo4j?

In previous posts, I have mentioned this work?

Learning to code using generative AI- mindmap - inverse bloom

where we explored learning c# and .NET and

e-agi framework

A Social cause - free to teachers

We will always work with teachers for free to make the service accessible.?

Team

The team comprises of me, Alexander Ash [MBCS, BSc (Econ)] ????? ?

Ay?e Mutlu Aditya Jaokar Anjali Jain and Marina Fernandez

I have also been sharing ideas with Ravindra Gadgil and Sebastian Britz

We also have an advisory board

If you are interested, the form to sign up is https://forms.gle/vZh6H9yUBfj47fVa6

There is no cost for the first cohorts. However, these will be selective since we already have a lot of applicants

with Lee Stott Christoffer Noring David Stevens

References

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/artificialintelligence-139-making-academic-publishing-ajit-jaokar-avy5e/

Image source: GPT4