Keep an AI on France #2: Education

Students are the future of AI 

Straight from high school new programs are being tested. At the Lycée Paul Valéry in Paris students are going to be taught the basic principles of maths and statistics for AI as well as how to manipulate commonly used software of the field. Nonetheless, the biggest commitment to education is made at the university level. 

French Universities already offers 18 AI master’s for which more than 1,000 students have already signed up. As the ambition is to triple the number of persons trained in AI by 2022, the government want to increase the number of university chairs. By 2022, the objective is to have 190 chairs to welcome 500 PhD students. These chairs will primarily be found in the 3IA (Interdisciplinary Institute for Artificial Intelligence).  

Bridging public research and companies 

There are going to be 3IA in Grenoble, Nice, Paris and Toulouse. They will gather leading researchers coming from different universities and research centre of the region to enhance findings and innovation. There is also the underlining desired outcome to turn more efficiently research into commercial use. This trail of thought has already been followed by Google and Microsoft. For example, the former finances an AI chair, since 2018, at the university Polytechnique. The latter announced that following the success of its AI training school located near Paris, it will open 9 others across the country.  

In overall, the emphasis put on education is to foster research and innovation to better bridge the public findings and their commercial application. The French expertise is growing.