Intel and Udacity team up to offer AI training programs for developers

Recently, Intel and Udacity announced the launch of the new Intel® Edge AI Nanodegree program for IoT developers. Using the Intel® OpenVINO™ toolkit, the program will provide developers with deep learning and computer vision training to accelerate the development and deployment of edge AI models. Students who successfully complete the training will receive a graduation certificate from Udacity, which is expected to take three months.

 “Students have long learned how to build and deploy deep learning models for the cloud. Through our partnership with Udacity, we are preparing AI developers to explore the edge, where data is first generated. Optimizing models for direct deployment on edge devices requires understanding unique constraints such as power consumption, network bandwidth, latency, and different computing architectures. The skills provided in this course will enable developers and the companies they work for to put this into practice with real-world applications in a variety of fields.”

--Jonathan Ballon, Vice President of Intel's Internet of Things Group and General Manager of Intel's Vision Marketing and Channel Division

As industries such as manufacturing, retail, and healthcare increase their efforts to develop computer vision and AI at the edge to obtain accurate and real-time data insights, it is imperative to ensure that employees have the relevant skills to meet the needs of these industries. The global edge computing market size is expected to reach US$8.96 billion by 2023 and will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 32.6%. There are not enough workers to meet industry needs.

“This program is part of Udacity’s commitment to train a million developers around the world,” said Gabe Dalporto, CEO of Udacity. “Our collaboration with Intel will open doors for developers to learn how to deploy cutting-edge AI technologies at the edge and help developers who otherwise would not have adequate access to educational resources advance in their fields.”

How it works: To address the growing skills gap, the Nanodegree program gives students the opportunity to complete three real-world projects, each of which is reviewed by a panel of Udacity judges. Students who successfully complete the Nanodegree program will receive Udacity certification and have practitioner-level skills in “delivering AI at the edge.”

For those who are unable to participate in the full Nanodegree program, the Intel® Edge AI Fundamentals course includes some free content from the Nanodegree program. This course does not include projects or instructor technical support, but provides knowledge on how to develop AI solutions for the edge.

About the Nanodegree Scholarship: In November 2019, Intel and Udacity jointly launched the Intel Edge AI Basics Course. Today, the first 850 students who completed the two-and-a-half-month basic course have received Nanodegree scholarships. Among them, 25 scholarship winners are from the Portland chapter of "Women Who Code".

About the Nanodegree Program: The Nanodegree Program will introduce students to the Intel® OpenVINO™ Toolkit, which enables developers to deploy pre-trained deep learning models through high-level C++ or Python reasoning engine APIs that integrate application logic. Based on convolutional neural networks, using the Intel® OpenVINO™ Toolkit will enable students to maximize application performance in various heterogeneous Intel architectures to achieve fast and efficient deep learning workloads. Company employees can also use Intel DevCloud for the Edge to develop, test, and run workloads on the latest Intel hardware and software clusters.