Tulsa Community College has been awarded a $40,000 grant to develop an artificial intelligence lab.
TCC is one of 15 colleges nationwide selected to receive a grant as part of the Artificial Intelligence Incubator Network Initiative, a collaboration between the American Association of Community Colleges, Dell Technologies and Intel, officials announced this week.
The college will create an AI lab using a virtual platform, which will aim to provide greater access to AI computing power, tools and resources and foster the skills needed for future jobs.
“Our participation in this national initiative provides TCC with a level of tailored technical and peer support that will greatly enhance our ongoing efforts to develop a successful and comprehensive industry-recommended curriculum, including artificial intelligence, to meet demand growing workforce,” said Leigh Goodson, TCC. president and CEO.
People are also reading…
TCC is incorporating AI content into current courses and redesigning some courses leading to the Information Technology Application Development degree.
Courses for fall 2022 and spring 2023 added more AI content, and a new course on data visualization planned for summer 2023 will take AI skills to the next level.
“The potential for AI adds to the technology hub in the Tulsa region,” said Travis White, TCC’s dean of business and information technology. “With the help of this grant, our students can now acquire basic skills in data analysis, data visualization and machine learning. These additions set the stage for students to further their learning in the field.”
Featured video: Could the US military one day use artificial intelligence that told the future?
Will we be able to see the future soon before it happens?
How AI predicts what you will buy
How AI predicts what you will buy
It’s a jungle out there—few places are as big as the world of “smart” advertising.
Marketing geniuses have then developed increasingly sophisticated algorithms that take all the information collected about you online or from your phone and put together a customer profile that could include everything from your favorite pair of socks to names for children.
Analyzing current market practices, Wicked Reports explored how artificial intelligence, or AI, can be used to gather data and make sales predictions across the Internet. Some techniques you may be aware of, such as persistent cookies that turn your computer into a ping hub for the websites you visit. Others are much more sophisticated, compiling all your characteristics by analyzing what you’ve bought in the past, what you’ve added to your cart and abandoned, and what you’ve searched for . From there, advertisers can even market to similar customers as well.
The digital advertising industry is expected to top $20 billion in 2022. That’s far from enough to top the 10 largest industries in the US, but it’s significant money — especially when compared to the big ticket ads purchased in the past. an exciting magazine spread. Companies today are more willing than ever to spend what it takes to bring in ideal customers.
Read on to discover some of the tactics AI uses to predict purchasing behaviors.
Stanisic Vladimir // Shutterstock
Compiling user movement across the web
You may be familiar with cookies: tiny text files that websites store on your computer as a way to track online behavior.
When you visit websites from Europe, for example, a law there mandates that you click through a cookie agreement that is much more transparent than in the U.S. There are session cookies that last a single browsing “session” (until you restarting your computer or browser) and persistent cookies that remain until you delete them. Think of a cookie as a floating hand every time you visit the same website. Together, they create a heat map of how often and when you visit each website in your browsing history. They can even communicate your presence to other websites as a way to combine your data.
picture alliance // Getty Images
Identify user characteristics
User characteristics, and something called demographic segmentation, is a key way that online advertising targets you. User attributes are any of your qualities, from your gender and age to the car you drive and the pets you own. These user characteristics are the result of the advertising concept of demographic segmentation, where companies can buy lists of specific people.
Are you a 25-year-old white male with one dog, a full-time job as an auto tech, and a rental apartment in a “transitional” neighborhood? We have just the plaid shirt for you.
Anna Hoychuk // Shutterstock
Mapping user location data
If you’ve used GPS in your smartphone or any of the hyperlocal dating apps, location data is leveraged to your advantage—at least for now.
How does your phone know where you are? Cell phone towers will ping your phone when you are nearby. In your home, your Wi-Fi network is probably hard-coded to your location. That’s also true for any Wi-Fi network you join or access during your errands, at school, at work, and so on. After that, GPS can locate your phone to an alarmingly small area while you’re carrying it around, so not just in your house but in one corner of one room.
mong84 // Shutterstock
Match new users with known customers who look and act in similar ways
Some items on this list are not surprising, or we are used to being told about them in such a way that they do not seem as strange and scary as they once were. But people are still likely to be surprised at the depths to which companies will go to give you better advertising. Your favorite clothing store, for example, could put together a complete data “picture” of you: what you’ve bought from them, what you’re shopping for, where your address is, and more. Then they can reverse engineer someone like you and buy a demographic matching list.
Anything can be filtered until exactly the desired customer base remains, and then they buy the ads.
Gorodenkoff // Shutterstock
Addressable IP address through a network connection
How much do you know about your IP address? Many of us are old enough to remember a time when we needed to know a specific IP address and type it into our computer settings.
Today, your home router has a hard-coded IP address and its number values indicate where you are as well as your “node” on your local network. That information could be for sale to different companies because, with the right technology, they can use some IP addresses to understand the rest—and guess where you live. Apple is among the tech companies pushing back against this type of IP targeting by masking IP addresses in its proprietary Safari browser.
This story originally appeared on Wicked Reports and was produced and distributed in partnership with Stacker Studio.
Habichtland // Shutterstock
