Students on the Seattle campus went to the Silicon Valley and Vice Versa campus to attend the industry panels and participate in a hack-a-thon.
Surya Shivam learned two big lessons during the spring vacation: document your trip and do not hesitate to look for help – take -out dishes that had nothing to do with the trip to a beach for a relaxing vacation.
Shivam was one of the 28 graduate students of the Northeast University who spent the spring holidays deeply digging in all aspects of AI – of its impact on companies to cause engineering and the construction of their own agents supplied by AI.
Students on the Seattle campus went to the Silicon Valley and Vice Versa campus to attend the industry panels and participate in a hack-a-thon.
But the AI immersion week was mainly a question of strengthening skills. In particular the Hack-A-Thon, which challenged students from Silicon Valley to develop an artificial intelligence agent using Agentforce, a new software developed by Salesforce. An AI agent is a system that can process information and take measures independently.
“It was all learning, nothing else,” said Harshika Santoshi, master's degree in data science on the Silicon Valley campus. “For someone who never touched this application to understand it, it was a learning experience.”
Santoshi, who stayed in Silicon Valley and welcomed graduate students based in Seattle, worked on the Shivam team by designing a fraud detection system with the IA integrated invoice. But they did not go to the unprepared hack-a-thon.
Before starting their work, the students attended a workshop with Curt Carlson, professor of business practice in the Northeast, who shared strategies to refine a product idea before starting to build it.
“It helped us think about offering an idea that is precious for customers,” said Aisha Abdur Rahim, student of Silicon Valley Computer Science. “Because if we create something that has no value, then it is essentially a waste of time.”
Working with Agentforce was not easy at the start, said students. While Salesforce representatives have traveled the room to answer questions, students started creating their projects only to find that certain features, such as loading images and PDFs, did not work. Other students found themselves spending most of their stuck time and wanted it to be easier to save to a previous version.
This is how Surya Shivam learned that it is important to always document your work and do not hesitate to ask for help.
“If our team had done, our teams could have submitted the project well before the time,” said Shivam. “When I asked for help, we had a very clear idea of how to proceed.”
The experience was useful at the Salesforce TDX conference, which students attended after the Hack-A-Thon. Also assisted by developers of professional software and computer leaders, the conference included a workshop on Agentforce, which was intimidating at the start, said Rahim. But it didn't last long.
“I felt very confident and able to converse with professionals who used this tool throughout their work,” she said. “It was a bit intimidating because all the participants were experienced professionals.”
Students who spent the week in Seattle learned directly from the industry how AI is used at the levels of companies and startups. Their first day was devoted to knowing how the venture capital works, during a workshop with the fund based in Seattle Onesixone Ventures. Students engaged in a discussion with experts who explained how they choose commercial ideas to support.
This was particularly inspiring for the student of Seattle, Jenny Huang, who obtained her master's degree in computer science but has a training in finance.
“They made a very specific presentation on how they assess whether an AI product will succeed or not,” said Huang. “Even if I am a student at the CS, I may find a career path in the technology industry identifying good products and technological startups.”
Students were encouraged to network during the workshop. The master's degree in computer science, Kaustubah Eluri, said that the week was worth it after the first day only.
“I had so many links on the first day,” he said. “As a group, we have learned how important communication is with investors, hiring managers and recruiters in all industries.”
During the week in Seattle, students also met industry practitioners in T-Mobile and Microsoft to understand how the influence their work and their development development. Amazon Web Services Skills Center presented a workshop, “demystifying generative AI”, to give students an understanding of how artificial intelligence has developed.
“From theory to the concept in the 1950s, we obtained the basics of automatic learning, in -depth learning and generator AI,” said Jenny Huang, master's degree in computer science in Seattle. “It was a very good base.”
Students also received a deep look at the evolution of rapid engineering for products integrated into AI. The teacher of engineering and science of data RAM Hariharan led a workshop where the students explored the various results of the basic and more sophisticated prompts.
“We have examined how few shots can be combined with thought chain methods,” said Huang. “Then we can use a more advanced and complete method called React invites. It has gone from very basic methods to advanced methods, which is useful for academics as well as daily life and work. »»
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