NU Splash Biography

Do you have a business idea but don't know how to start? Or do you want to be prepared for when your next big idea strikes? In this class, we'll discuss how to pursue a business idea in an efficient, low-cost, and scalable manner. Specifically, we'll discuss how to use a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) — the simplest product you can offer to your customers — to quickly validate your idea. We'll discuss the importance of failing fast, look at different kinds of MVPs you can use for your product, and explore case studies of companies that cleverly used MVPs to launch their businesses. By the end of this class, you'll be prepared to go out and pursue any business idea that you have! Students are encouraged to sign up for this class whether or not you currently have any business ideas – hopefully this class will inspire you, or at the very least, prepare you for when an idea strikes!

As AI continues to be applied to more and more use-cases, its potential impact on society has grown significantly – both for good and for bad. In this course, we'll examine several ethical implications of the use of AI in our society. We'll discuss how AI models can unintentionally become biased against gender and race, the privacy and surveillance concerns introduced by AI, and the danger of AI-produced misinformation. AI isn't something that needs to be feared, but by gaining a deeper understanding of the surrounding ethical concerns, we can make sure we can take advantage of the benefits it brings while protecting ourselves from the potential harms. As a discussion-based class, we'll be flexible in what topics we focus on based on what people are interested in discussing. No prior knowledge is required to take this class – anyone with an interested in the ethics of AI is encouraged to register!

From transportation to healthcare and e-commerce to agriculture, artificial intelligence can be found everywhere. Interested in learning how it works? In this class, we will dive into the topic of decision trees, the most common model in supervised machine learning. We will both discuss how they work and use them to make our own machine learning model! This class is open to anyone – no experience required!