Louise Joly is the administrator of the AI program at Simplon, which is celebrating its five-year anniversary in March. There at the moment are 20 of those AI schools in France, which have trained about 900 people, about 33 percent of them women. Joly says that Simplon has long wanted to succeed in gender parity in its classes, but that a wide range of barriers holding back women have made it hard to succeed in that goal.
“At Simplon, we’re less concerned concerning the reasons behind that tumbler ceiling than finding an answer,” she says. To that end, it created prequalification course for ladies only within the AI program, which she says has resulted in the next completion rate.
She also cites the faculties’ hands-on methodology for its success in placing its students into good jobs. Participants within the AI training spend 4 months within the classroom, seven hours per day. Then they spend a yr in an apprenticeship at an organization, with one week in school and three weeks on the job. Simplon works with corporations to create and constantly improve the training program. Corporations select candidates for apprenticeships from Simplon from the start of the training program. In this fashion, Simplon supports corporations in a non-traditional recruitment process – producing strong recruits outside of the conventional channels, comparable to level of education, skilled background and former experience.
Laurent Cetinsoy is a professor within the Microsoft AI School by Simplon in Paris, and he’s an advocate of the college’s hands-on approach.
“The thought is, if you must learn tennis, one of the simplest ways just isn’t by hearing some old guy speaking about tennis for 3 hours,” he says. “We attempt to put the scholar into motion as soon as possible, but that doesn’t mean I don’t explain things.”
Even through the intense class portion of the course, Cetinsoy says, the participants work on real projects.
In the primary yr of this system, he says, the category helped an inventor improve a machine that recycles plastic immediately to be utilized in an attached 3D printer to create recent objects. Class members used AI in training the machine to acknowledge and type the plastic by type. “We had the luck to see [Microsoft Chairman and CEO] Satya Nadella visit the college at the moment, and he really liked the project,” he says.
Stan Briand graduated from the AI School in February of 2022 after a yr spent in an apprenticeship at LACROIX in Rennes. There, he developed a system using AI and the Web of Things (IoT) to assist detect leaks within the water system of the town of Nevers.
“On average in France pipelines are leaking 22 to 25 percent, so about one fourth of the clean water we produce for drinking goes back into nature,” Briand says. “That is attributable to multiple aspects, but crucial one is the pipelines are aging. Apart from the environmental waste, this loss costs huge amounts of cash.”
The system Briand developed takes data from 200 sensors that detect water flow within the Nevers water network and uses an AI algorithm to research it. The AI helps pinpoint where leaks are more than likely to be found. Scrutinizing that data was taking on well over an hour a day for a employee on the water utility. Briand says the job now takes five minutes and frees up time for other critical maintenance tasks.
“France and another countries are having problems with drought,” making water resources more precious, Briand says. “This can be a step toward solving those sorts of issues, so it’s really rewarding.” The system he created is now in use at a second municipal water system and will probably be deployed to others.
Briand’s supervisor at LACROIX is Reynholds Reinette. During Briand’s one-year apprenticeship, he showed skill and initiative in developing the water anomaly detection system, Reinette says, and it was a straightforward decision to rent him.
“The project was great, and we desired to proceed working on it,” Reinette says. He says LACROIX recently hired one other Microsoft AI School by Simplon graduate in Rennes and may have one other apprentice from the college starting later within the spring.
Before training as an AI specialist, Briand taught English in Chengdu, China, and eventually became an administrator on the national level for a gaggle of English-language schools. He computerized the administration system and have become fascinated with what he could do with data. When he moved back to France, he decided to search out training to enter the world of computer programming.
“At the moment, I felt that the AI field would require a number of experience, a number of math background and mainly I believed it could be too hard for me to get into that,” he recalls. “However the Microsoft-Simplon school doesn’t require that much math or perhaps a master level in technology. So, I applied, I passed a number of tests, and I got in.”
Cetinsoy, the AI professor, echoes Briand, saying that crucial aspects for fulfillment in this system are motivation and willingness to work very hard.
“You wish an analytical mind and an analytical view to resolve problems,” he says. “Good programming skills are more necessary than being a crack at math.”