Communities which seize the educational opportunities thrown up by artificial intelligence will be the best-placed to thrive in the future.

That's the view of top US tech leader Ryan Keenan  who will keynote the annual BelTech conference in Titanic Belfast next month.

Keenan (below), an Irish American based in Nevada but with distant relatives in South Derry, works with world-leading AI authority Andrew Ng — whose online learning platform Coursera boasts over 150m learners — to build educational experiences that deliver industry-relevant skills and connect the global AI community.

"For most of human existence, in order to get an education, your options were rather limited," he says. "You had in-person interaction like in a classroom or an apprenticeship situation. You could consume static media like books and newspapers. And of course, there's always been just good old trial and error.

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"But in the past decade or so, online education has made it possible for educators to reach orders of magnitude more learners, and for many learners to get a quality education when they might have otherwise not had access to it -- albeit with certain drawbacks like the sort of 'one-size-fits-all' nature of many online courses and the lack of direct human mentorship."

Generative AI - artificial intelligence which teaches itself to get better — opens up even more opportunities for learners.

"Now, with generative AI we are poised to build a new future, where education can be made not only more accessible than ever before, but also personalised to the individual," adds Keenan.

BelTech takes place in Titanic Belfast on 10 and 11 April with presentations and panel discussions on the first day aimed at tech practitioners and an education day for 500 schoolchildren on the second day.