Around 50 participants from companies, organisations and universities gathered to discuss expertise development within AI. The aim of the workshop was to forge contacts between researchers from Linköping University and representatives for companies and organisations in the public sector, and give them the opportunity to discuss and identify possible future commissioned education within AI. The workshop also presented seven new courses within the field of AI that will be given at LiU for the first time in 2019.
AI is a "mindset"
One of the participants was Magnus Ranlöf from Sectra Imaging IT Solution AB. He is head of development for IT systems within medical care, and realises that AI is a necessary and growing field within the domain.
“Our operations are centred on providing medical care more efficiently. We are good at collecting data, but we tend to place a large responsibility on the doctors who are to manage them. In this case, AI is a powerful decision-support tool for the doctors, and an invaluable aid when they must set priorities.”
How would you benefit from courses in AI?
“We are experts, but most of our employees are not knowledgeable in AI. I’m convinced we need to learn more, and it’s here that commissioned education can play a role, as an additional way of exploiting the expertise at LiU.
AI is a ‘mindset’, and you must understand something if you are to bring innovation. Taking such a course is one way to help one’s ideas ripen.”
Close dialogue
The subject of AI in itself attracted Jan Sjunnesson, senior advisor for education at Combitech, to the workshop.
“AI-based systems are often used by professionals. This means that it is important that the system is adapted to the users and the work environment in which they operate. Users and the system must act together in harmony. Or, to put it another way, artificial intelligence must be balanced with human intelligence. I’m sure that courses are needed here that the university and the commercial world can design in collaboration.”
Sabrina Thelander, head of LiU Commissioned Education is satisfied with the results of the workshop.
“This is how we want to work, in a close dialogue with companies and the public sector, to build relationships and provide them with impetus. The discussions have been animated, and the discussion group that I was a member of came up with five ideas for new courses, in addition to the seven that will start in the spring and autumn of 2019, which were also partially created in dialogue with the commercial world and the public sector.”
The purpose of the workshop was to provide the participants with more information about the university’s research within AI, and to enable researchers and the personnel at LiU Commissioned Education to learn more about the requirements of the participating organisations.
“We’ve achieved our goal today”, says Sabrina Thelander. “The limitation now is not the demand for our courses, but how much capacity LiU has to hold them. Today has been a success.”
Translated by George Farrants