Overtaking the industry from the university in the field of “artificial intelligence”

A member of the academic staff of Sharif University of Technology said about the place of artificial intelligence in the academic and industrial environment: I think that in the field of artificial intelligence, the university has not yet been able to keep up with the industry and solve practical and important issues. As a result, the industry has developed artificial intelligence to reduce its costs and also to gain a competitive advantage at a lower cost. I see the industry ahead of the university in some cases in the field of artificial intelligence, and considering that the university has not been able to solve some major issues and remains in the academic world, I think that the industry will overtake the university in the near future.

Referring to the increase in the amount of “data” in the industry, Dr. Mohammad Hossein Rehban said: Considering the increase in the amount of “data” that has occurred in the industry and considering that various industries have realized that “data” can be capital for them, The trend of using artificial intelligence in Iran’s industries is increasing. This issue is tied to the discussion of intelligent “data” analysis. Many industries are using artificial intelligence and anyone who has some kind of “data” that can use this “data” to improve their business is actually moving towards using artificial intelligence.

This assistant professor of Sharif University of Technology said about the hardware capabilities of artificial intelligence in Iran: modern artificial intelligence methods such as deep learning require hardware that is called GPU (Graphics Processing Unit). Buying this GPU is not very expensive and in my opinion, compared to other technologies used in the world, there is a good potential to use it. These GPUs are graphics cards, most of which are imported to Iran from other countries. Sanctions have somewhat made it harder to access them, but they are still available in the Iranian market.

Stating that artificial intelligence has more or less entered the field of human sciences, he said: For example, in the field of writing and composition, artificial intelligence can determine whether someone who claims to have written a text has really written it himself or not. If we want to make sure an article is written by someone or not, we can use artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence can also be used in the field of psychology, although these techniques are not widespread yet. There are non-intelligent ways to detect scientific fraud in articles, but artificial intelligence can check the similarity of the writing of an article with previous articles of an author and help detect scientific fraud.

In response to a question about the negative aspects of using artificial intelligence, Rehban said: There are discussions about ethics in artificial intelligence applications, but it does not seem that ethical issues can be easily calculated; For example, when using a self-driving car, there may be a situation for a driver to decide to do one of two bad things. In addition to ethical debates, the development of artificial intelligence can also lead to legal debates. For example, if this self-driving car collides with another self-driving car on the street, who is to blame? Another issue is the importance of maintaining the privacy of users’ personal data during their processing, which has recently been raised in artificial intelligence. In Iran, due to the fact that in the field of artificial intelligence, it moves a little behind the rest of the world, the ethical and legal discussions of artificial intelligence have not been widespread.

A member of the academic staff of Sharif University of Technology, referring to the students’ acceptance of artificial intelligence in universities, said: “Artificial intelligence is growing at the academic level in Iran, and students are very receptive to this field.” In my opinion, the field of artificial intelligence is suitable for people who want to study in this field outside of Iran and for people who want to study and work in Iran, and it is possible to do a good business in this field with low cost and low capital. The field was launched. Artificial intelligence is developing in Iran and we are still at the beginning and we have a long way to go to use the potential of this trend in Iran.

He added: If we go back to about 10 years ago, the university was considered the main bearer of artificial intelligence and artificial intelligence was looked at in a completely academic way, but now with the spread of artificial intelligence in the industry, some development and research industries are pursuing this issue within themselves. they do The university has not yet been able to keep up with the industry and solve practical and important issues, as a result, industries have developed artificial intelligence to reduce their costs and also to gain a competitive advantage at a lower cost. I see the industry ahead of the university in some fields in this field, and in the near future, considering that the university has not yet been able to solve some practical problems of the industry and remains in the academic world, I think that the industry will be ahead of the university in the field of artificial intelligence. take

Rehban said about the reason why the university lags behind the industry in the field of artificial intelligence: In developed countries, the basis of a research is capital and a grant that is allocated to solve the problem. In Iran, the entry of capital into the university to solve the problem is weak. Now, the process of defining the problem in the university is done by students and professors in a scattered manner, and I consider this to be an important factor in the university lagging behind the industry.

This assistant professor of the computer faculty of Sharif University of Technology said about the relationship between the university and the industry in the field of artificial intelligence: In my opinion, due to the widespread use of artificial intelligence, there is a greater demand from the industry side to connect with the university than in other fields. We also lack good manpower in AI, that’s why industry likes to tie up with academia to get good human resources.

Rehban continued: Most industries cooperate with universities in recruiting human resources. I think that as much as the industry has understood the importance of artificial intelligence, the university has not understood and I do not see much support for artificial intelligence activists at the university level. Of course, they have created courses to use artificial intelligence, but there has been no financial support or investment, especially in the field of artificial intelligence, from the university. It can be said that the university has created hardware platforms for using artificial intelligence; For example, universities are looking to create a cloud service platform to help use artificial intelligence. In my opinion, investments have mostly remained at this level.

A member of the academic staff of Sharif University of Technology noted that it will take time for the university to realize the importance of artificial intelligence as well as the industry, but having professors in the university who have a good relationship with the industry and bring good projects to the university can This topic helps; But there are some obstacles on this way. A professor who wants to collaborate with the industry must legally coordinate with the university. For this reason, some professors prefer this cooperation with the industry outside the university. In my opinion, the university should facilitate this process due to the growing artificial intelligence, so that professors can expand their cooperation with industries and bring more to the university level. In addition, the university should provide more support to the startups that are located in the university accelerators so that the activities in these fields become more popular among professors and students.

He said about the level of artificial intelligence education in Iran: In my opinion, academically, Iran’s good universities have good professors in the field of artificial intelligence, but most of these educations remain at the academic level and are not problem-oriented in order to bring students into the industry. The reason is that when a person enters the industry, he needs another investment to prepare to work in the industry again. In the university, the basis of techniques is taught and we do not go into professional and practical education. Institutions and companies in the field of applied artificial intelligence education are operating and expanding, and I hope this empty space between university and industry will be filled in this way.

At the end, Rehban said about the topics he works on in the field of artificial intelligence: I use artificial intelligence in the fields of bioinformatics, machine vision and image processing. In the field of bioinformatics, the discussion of microscopic image analysis and evaluation of cells for drug discovery is one of the topics that I worked on before coming to Iran and I am still working on it. The results we reached help to understand biological processes. In fact, these results produce science in the field of biology using the processing we do on biological data and can lead to drug discovery in the long run.