Apart from around 5000 universities offering AI courses/ content, there are more than 8000 AI Academies around the world offering shorter non degree courses but there is a very wide variation in content, duration and quality of such courses. At present most AI academies end up developing their own individual AI courses, their own use cases and their own resources for their trainees. Hence, there is no consistency in coverage or quality between the courses or AI academies. Because of the pace of AI development, these courses also need to be continuously updated and improved and this too, incurs enormous on going costs for such AI academies.
Delivery of the SDGs, requires motivating, mobilisation and deployment of an “Army” of AI entrepreneurs to develop suitable products and services to meet the needs of the developing world. This can be done by showing potential trainees the numerous lucrative AI products that can now be devised . This increase in trainees also helps WAAA member academies by increasing their incomes. Since the needs related to the 17 SDGs are well defined and similar in each country, there is an opportunity to standardise an initial set of courses and resources related to applying AI to deliver the SDGs. Existing courses and resources can be pooled and more AI courses and resources can be devised jointly and added to the pool so that they can be shared and used by all those who participated in their development .
The WAAA is being established to enable AI academies from around the world to collaborate in developing AI courses specifically targeted at each of the 17 individual SDGs and the 15 -20 groups of society whose needs must be met if we are to deliver the SDGs. Discussions are underway to explore how this can best be done and the role that individual AI academies and leading experts can play in developing such courses .
Training millions of AI entrepreneurs will significantly increase the numbers of AI trainees ( and hence incomes ) for each participating Academy who opts to join WAAA and collaborates in development of courses and training materials .
