I’m totally new to AI. My background is military special operations and since leaving the army I’ve transformed from close protection work to telcom and on to software development.  I made the switch cuz I’ve noticed that not near as many people want to shoot at IT guys… except maybe their employees

I’m now heading up an NGO to get Out of School Youth a high school diploma through a prototype online education platform that we have put together over the last few years.  We are due to start teacher training soon and from what I know about AI it is highly likely that we can use it to take some of the work load off of our online teachers.

Anyway,  I believe in surrounding myself with people who are smarter than I am, and I thought this might be a good place to get introduced to some AI guru’s.  If anyone is down to help these kids put their lives back together with the help of AI then I would like to chat with you.

Cheers…

Hi, Fred, and welcome to chatbots.org!

First off, let me just say Thank you for your service. I’m Dave, and I’m one of the regulars here. I think that what you want to do sounds very worthwhile, and while I’m not an “AI guru”, by any stretch of the imagination, I’m certainly willing to provide whatever sort of assistance I can. Telcom/SD/IT is a far cry from SO, so can you fill us all in on what sort of experience you have, so we can learn how best to advise you? Thanks.

Howdy Dave, Thanks a lot for the speedy and warm welcome.

Harry Kinze from Pandorabots recommended that I get hold of you.

We have just implemented the Pandorabots API into our Learning Management System for the purpose of helping the students with their lessons, and we also plan to use students to program AIML as part of a livelihood program for the students that pass our course of instruction.  Perhaps you fellas can direct me the proper subject area(s) of your forum where I could do the following:
1. Find an AIML programming/training guru who could consult with us as our AI subject matter expert.
2. Find a AIML Chatbot developer who can consult with us on the design, development and testing of our chatbot as well as integrating of AIML into our adaptive learning module of our Learning Management System.
3. An overall AI generalist who can consult with us to help us wade through the vast amount of AI information and zero in on the info that we need to support our student programs.

I’m also new to the whole social/forum thing, so I hope I’m not violating any protocol by asking these questions.  I believe strongly that AI can make a substantial contribution to improving the lives of our disadvantaged students and help them carve a path out of the slums. The university that we’ve partnered with has the capability of raising a fair amounts of funds to support our AI component program and consultants, but I need to first demonstrate to the university the vast potential of AI to get the ball rolling with them.

Cheers…