Finland offers crash course in artificial intelligence to European Union

Finland is offering a techy Christmas gift to European Union citizens -- a free-of-charge online course in artificial intelligence in their own language, officials said Tuesday. The tech-savvy Nordic nation, led by the 34-year-old Prime Minister Sanna Marin, is marking the end of its rotating presidency of the EU at the end of the year with a highly ambitious goal. Instead of handing out the usual ties and scarves to EU officials and journalists, the Finnish government has opted to give practical understanding of AI to 1% of EU citizens, or about 5 million people, through a basic online course by the end of 2021. It is teaming up with the University of Helsinki, Finland's largest and oldest academic institution, and the Finland-based tech consultancy Reaktor. Teemu Roos, a University of Helsinki associate professor in the department of computer science, described the nearly $2 million project as "a civics course in AI" to help EU citizens cope with society's ever-increasing digitalization and the possibilities AI offers in the jobs market.