QCOSTARICA – Starting in 2023, students from the Professional Technical Colleges located in Santa Ana, Puriscal, Coronado and Calle Blancos will be able to opt for the specialty in Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Ministry of Public Education (MEP) and Intel Costa Rica announced this Thursday at the Santa Ana CTP.
The goal is, by 2024, to add another ten schools.
The purpose of the cooperation agreement is the development of joint actions that favor the acquisition of skills in Automatic Learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the students of Professional Technical Education.
The student community will also learn about the ethical and legal implications of this technology to foster not only knowledge, but also the promotion of responsible digital citizenship.
“This new technical specialty is a response to the demand for new professional profiles that the country requires and to the new trends that characterize the labor market today. Artificial Intelligence represents for Costa Rica and, especially for our young people, an opportunity to increase their competitiveness, promote innovation and employability,” said the Minister of Education, Anna Katharina Müller.
“The world is transforming at a rate we have never seen before and Artificial Intelligence is undoubtedly one of the megatrends that, like Intel, we are betting on. (…) This agreement with the MEP will prepare young people in this highly demanded technical area to increase their employability opportunities,” explained Ileana Rojas, Vice President and General Manager of Intel Costa Rica.
Benefit for youth
The signed agreement will allow the development of a three-year program, in which Intel provided the MEP, at no cost, with the model and content developed in Intel® AI For Youth or “Artificial Intelligence for Youth”.
This also allows for providing materials for the design of educational programs, the development of teaching material and to support teaching updating processes on the subject of AI and Machine Learning. Students who will begin the program in the 2023 school year will have a scholarship to learn English.
“Artificial intelligence is one of the exponential technologies that CINDE has its eyes on, knowing that the specialty represents new job opportunities that are highly demanded by companies. We are proud to see how, through public-private partnerships and a good reading of the environment, this technical career will be available and soon we will have more professionals who can dramatically improve the quality, efficiency and productivity of companies, as well as society itself.
“According to a KPMG study, only in Costa Rica about 75% of companies have begun to implement artificial technology in their processes, while together with “machine learning” it is one of the 5 megatrends in the sectors with the greatest attraction for foreign direct investment,” said Vanessa Gibson, director of investment climate at CINDE, the Costa Rican lnvestment Promotion Agency.
Artificial intelligence for young people
In 2019, Intel globally rolled out a focused AI capability program, AI for Youth, in partnership with governments to empower 13-19-year-olds with skills, mindsets, tools and opportunities appropriate to use technology responsibly in an AI-driven landscape.
The program is currently available in more than 26 countries around the world. In Poland, Germany, South Korea, Singapore, Moldova, India, China and South Africa, they have adopted AI for Youth on a national scale.
Costa Rica is the first country to develop the program in Latin America and the only one to formalize it as a specialty at the secondary education level.
Source: Revista Summa
