Head of the Department of Computer Science Denis Kozlov presented the updated Master's program in Artificial Intelligence at the annual DataConf conference.
Denis Kozlov highligted that this field is currently a major trend. Natural language processing is performed by large language models, which form the foundation of popular services ChatGPT and similar services.
The master's program at Altai State University teaches how to prepare data for machine learning models and how to automate projects using these technologies, among other topics.
“The master's program "Artificial Intelligence Engineering" was launched in 2022 under a grant won jointly with the Consortium of Universities led by the Ural Federal University,” said Denis Kozlov. “This grant enabled the development of a unified curriculum for several universities, including Altai State University. Now that the grant project has concluded, and we have gained the right to modify the curriculum. We are trying to keep up with current trends and technical advancements by establishing new partnerships and signing an agreement with an online platform to deliver our educational program in a network format."
Studying at Altai State University also involves working on projects for real customers. One such project was showcased at a recent conference.
Nikolay Glukhov, a fourth-year student at Altai State University and an employee of Estesis, presented a report on his diploma thesis, which focuses on detecting fraudulent activities at self-service checkouts.
“This is a highly relevant issue for operations involving weighed goods,” Nikolay explains. “The automated solution is linked to CCTV cameras. They film the weighing platform and use computer vision to verify whether the image corresponds to the product selected by the user. The program is being tested, and it has shown promising results so far.”
In addition to computer vision, Nikolay is also interested in advancements in natural language processing — an area of artificial intelligence that enables computers to understand, analyze, and generate text, thereby facilitating communication with people.
“Will AI replace developers? Rather, it will complement them, not replace them. Models will not be fully trusted anytime soon, but with their assistance, human work will become more efficient,” the conference participants emphasized.