Jolin: National Taiwan University AI Programme (November 2021)

Modern technology is undergoing rapid development, yet it remains unnoticeable for people who do not keep an eye on these updates. NTU AI virtual programme provided me with the opportunity to witness the growth of the new technology – artificial intelligence – which seemed to be impossible to achieve decades ago.

Before attending this program, I thought AI was far beyond my limit and I will never get to understand how AI is built. Therefore, it was astonishing when the professors went through the working logic and processes of AI in the lecture. I now know that AI exists in so many ways which people might not be aware of. This includes but is not limited to, Apple’s Face ID, the identification of real or fake images, the phone camera auto-corrections, and VR and AR applications. There are so many applications we use in our daily life, but we never notice their uses of AI.

I think the program is interesting yet challenging. As I have no pre-knowledge and experience dealing with AI, I have to learn a completely new topic with lots of jargon. It became a struggle to keep up with the lectures as I often forgot some key points from the previous lectures. Yet later I decided to create my own notes and communicate with other students in the program. It is very helpful and interesting to receive responses to my questions and hear everyone’s insight and concerns. From this, I learnt more about staying focused and learn how to note-take. The key is to be efficient and use a short amount of time to record down anything that is important or worth knowing. As a result, I improved my time management skill by organizing my study timetable to spend my time wisely. This skill can be used for anything at any time, but it is especially helpful for studying. It helps me to use my time more efficiently so I can get more things done in a short time span, and use my spare time for other things.

As this is my first time doing a summer programme at The University of Auckland, I appreciate the return I got from this programme. I think knowledge is priceless and this is definitely a worthy experience for a long summer holiday. It is good to use this time to learn something we might have no time or courage to approach before. However, it is important to know that this programme is only enjoyable if you put effort into it as technology is complicated. Although the lectures had already been modified to make it easier for people to understand, the knowledge which you should learn still takes a lot of time and effort to digest. My suggestion is to consider this if it is something you are actually interested in and you are willing to sacrifice some of your time to learn. By doing so, you will get the most out of this programme.

Finally, I want to thank all the staff and professors who are involved in this programme. Although the programme was done virtually, it was still conducted nicely, and everyone was friendly and easy to approach. It was a pleasure for me to meet new people, gain valuable experience and enrich my summer holiday by choosing the NTU AI virtual programme.

Yu Ding: National Taiwan University AI Programme (April 2021)

I am honoured to have participated in the National Taiwan University Virtual Program on Artificial Intelligence Development and Application, funded by the University of Auckland. This program consists of 10 recorded sessions and a one-hour meeting. To complete this program, we needed to watch 10 recordings of the complete department, attend the one-hour meeting, finish the final quiz and write an essay about AI and what you learned throughout this program.

I met the famous professor Hongyi Li and had an indepth discussion with him. I met with my classmates from all over the world, such as the United Kingdom, Japan, and the United States, and I had a good time talking about artificial intelligence development and application.

The biggest challenge in this program was that there are many concepts of artificial intelligence, and each concept is quite complex. To fully understand these concepts, you still need to put in more effort after class, and to communicate with professors at National Taiwan University. In addition, each recording is much longer than that of University of Auckland. It often takes 2 hours or even 3 hours more to watch the entire recording. It’s a great challenge for our attention and endurance.

On the other hand, there were no compulsory exercises and after school assignments for this program, so we needed to check and fill in the gaps ourselves. Through this program, I have mastered the related concepts and applications of artificial intelligence, neural network, machine learning and so on. At the same time, I also learned about the various uses of artificial intelligence in life and production. For example, the application of artificial intelligence in engineering, agriculture, natural language processing and medicine. In the final essay, I wrote about the application of artificial intelligence in the field of medicine. I introduced the advantages and disadvantages of Da Vinci robot and robotic surgery, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of artificial intelligence in medical imaging diagnosis.

Generally speaking, this program is very worthwhile. Through participating in this program, we can not only learn the concepts related to artificial intelligence, but also have face-to-face communication with famous professors of National Taiwan University. At the same time, we can also discuss with students from all over the world to enrich our views.