Alvin Lang
09 Aug 2024 15:42
California announced an AI education initiative in partnership with NVIDIA to equip universities and community colleges with generative AI skills.
The state of California has unveiled a groundbreaking AI education initiative in partnership with NVIDIA, a global leader in AI computing. According to an NVIDIA blog post, the public-private partnership aims to provide universities, community colleges, and adult education programs with the resources they need to develop generative AI skills.
Collaboration with California Colleges and Universities
As part of this initiative, California educators will have the opportunity to become certified through the NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute University Ambassador Program, which connects instructors with high-quality teaching kits, workshop content, and NVIDIA GPU-accelerated workstations in the cloud.
“AI will continue to advance and become more prominent across all sectors, and California has a responsibility to support and prepare its students and faculty,” said Amy Tong, secretary of the California Department of Government Administration. “As a world leader in AI computing, NVIDIA is a natural partner to help prepare California’s workforce for the future.”
By equipping educators with the skills to leverage the latest AI technologies and NVIDIA GPUs, the initiative aims to prepare full-time students for the workplace while also educating workers who can expand their skills through community colleges or adult education programs.
“We want to prepare the workforce of the future, and also get students and adults coming out of the workforce excited about the opportunities of the future,” said Stuart Knox, secretary of the California Department of Labor and Workforce Development.
State agencies are also exploring ways to give students hands-on experience in AI technologies through internships and apprenticeships.
Strengthening efforts to bridge the digital divide
NVIDIA is already working on several projects across California to make AI more accessible and understandable to students from diverse backgrounds. The company’s education initiatives and collaborations across industries are helping students and professionals in fields such as biotechnology, advanced manufacturing, media, and entertainment become AI-savvy, productive, and innovative.
San José State University is evaluating how the NVIDIA Omniverse development platform can help create a digital twin—a 3D virtual representation of a real-world system—for the city of San José. During the university’s annual Black Engineer Week in June, NVIDIA hosted dozens of students for a daylong program featuring technology demos and career counseling discussions.
NVIDIA is also working with schools in the University of California and California State University systems on a number of human, climate, and community-based projects. One project will train students in underwater data center technology, while another, in partnership with California Black Media, will train large-scale language models on nearly a century of journalism by Black journalists in the state.
NVIDIA’s GTC AI conference in San Jose earlier this year featured several sessions where educators could explore how to integrate generative AI and NVIDIA technologies into their curricula. The conference also included a panel discussion on the need for equitable access to AI education and resources.
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