Mayla Montgomery

Animated, AI/ML Club Vice President Aditya Madhan ‘24 leads a lesson on image classification as club members look on. Officers plan the lessons around club members’ previous knowledge and understanding. “AI is definitely a complicated thing to teach,” club President Raghav Aggarwal ’24 said. “I think the biggest thing is how we’re gonna make this complicated stuff easy to understand.”

On Friday, Feb. 9, members of Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) Club gathered in sponsor Ms. Jennifer Howitt’s room for a lesson on image classification. Through a slideshow and presentation led by AI/ML Club Vice President Aditya Madhan ‘24 members learned about the practical applications of image recognition through a grid technique that recognizes unique color values. Members will then be able to apply this Artificial Intelligence (AI) technique to their own programs and systems that they will create at future meetings. 

Club officers plan out the lessons that will be taught at each of their meetings throughout the year at the very beginning of the year. Through this meticulous schedule, officers hope that members can build off of the knowledge they acquire throughout the year’s meetings. 

“We plan each meeting [to] try to stay consistent. But if most of the members are confused, we repeat a lesson,” AI/ML Club President Raghav Aggarwal ‘24 said. “It’s often just [leaving] space [for people’s] confusion levels, because AI is definitely a complicated thing to teach. I think the biggest thing is how we’re gonna make this complicated stuff easy to understand.” 

Centering around a specific type of AI suited for images, the lesson allowed club members the opportunity to learn about AI’s various real-world applications. 

“One example is a self-driving car, and it’s trying to see the sign on the road,” Aggarwal said. “It would have used the same AI we’re teaching today.”

In addition to the general lesson, which garnered a large audience, AI/ML club also held time for their competition team to meet and discuss preparations for their upcoming award and data science competition. 

“I think [the meeting] was pretty good, because I think we have a large amount of people here,” Aggarwal said. “Plus, apart from our general members there [were members]  who were asked to participate in the competition this year, so I got to meet with the team members competing and sort of walk them through [the process] and give them guidance.”

Aggarwal has been an AI/ML Club officer for three years. His passion for AI started at club meetings, and he hopes to share that passion with new members. 

“There were good officers that I got to know, and I would talk to them and that’s how I got interested [in AI], and then I started learning more about it,” Aggarwal said. “As president, I’m trying to pass on the same thing that happened to me.”

Aggarwal hopes that today’s lesson will spark an interest in club members that will encourage them to continue pursuing AI. 

“I think mostly [I want members to gain] curiosity, because it’s impossible for us to teach them and for them [to] fully understand [in one meeting],” Aggarwal said, “They do have to put in the effort if they’re interested to go out and do more learning online. As long as that interest is sparked, that’s all you want.”