Lavey man becomes first NI graduate of Artificial Intelligence college

A County Derry man has become the first in NI to graduate from a top Middle Eastern University of Artificial Intelligence.

Kevin Toner from Lavey graduated from Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence in Abu Dhabi (MBZUAI) last Wednesday.

Kevin, who previously attended St Patrick's College Maghera and studied Computer Science at Queen's University Belfast, said the experience was 'amazing'.

“I really enjoyed the opportunity to meet and make friends with students from all over the world, and experience different cultures .

“The students in my year were from 24 different countries from all around the world.

“The university campus is very small and there are not a lot of students at the university, less than 300 currently, this means that we have a strong bond with almost all the other students even across year groups and disciplines,” he said.

Kevin also studied Business at Hastings College in the United States for a year before attending MBZUAI.

He said the United Arab Emirates College was the most challenging academic experience of his life so far.

Kevin programmed multiple AI's over the course of his masters, including one that predicts the stock price of a company.

His thesis aimed to correct the measurement error of the daily recorded Covid cases in the USA.

Many of the country's testing centres closed on weekends and resulted in daily cases being recorded as zero some days.

Monday to Friday recorded significantly higher cases as a result with people testing on those days instead.

“This measurement error made the data noisy,” he said. “I created various algorithms to uncover the true propagation pattern of the daily Covid cases in the USA, and discover the true daily Covid cases.

“The algorithms were able to correct the measurement error and get the true daily Covid cases, which removed the peaks and dips,” he added.

AI is now found in many areas of life. Last year The Harvard Business Review reported that 86% of CEOs said AI was becoming a 'mainstream technology' at their company.

Kevin believes it will have a mostly positive impact on the world as it becomes more common.

“In terms of important change, I would think the field of medical imaging is one of the most important. There are quite a few students at the university working on AI on medical images.

“Computer Vision (a subfield of AI) can be used to detect abnormalities, such as cancers, in medical images. This has the potential to save many lives – as true positive detections should improve.

“So, AI has the potential to improve healthcare for everyone,” Kevin said.

However, a concern for many is the automation of jobs. While he acknowledges this risk, Kevin says AI will also create new jobs.

“Sadly the workers of automated jobs might have to be retrained and find a different type of job, but AI has the potential to create new job opportunities, so maybe the total number of jobs stays the same.

“It's hard to say which one outweighs the other, but AI will improve the lives of many, many people,” he said.

Kevin was drawn to study AI after reading a book about how important AI's role will be in the future. He began looking for AI courses in Europe but all those deadlines had passed.

He came across MBZUAI which also offered perks such as accommodation, full tuition and a stipend.

“It was referred to as the first AI university in the world and I was convinced that this is the best place to be if I wanted to be involved in this field – especially since the UAE had a National Artificial Intelligence Strategy 2031.

“Being dedicated to the AI field meant that students would all share similar interests.

“I had never been to the Middle East before, so I was excited to explore a new part of the world. I heard of a few people visiting the UAE on holidays, and it sounded awesome, so I was interested to go,” he said.

Beyond his studies Kevin enjoyed the local food, trips to the desert – though the heat was often unbearable in the summer he made the most of the winter months.

He lived near Yas Island which now frequently hosts events of global interest such as boxing and the UFC.

And despite travelling nearly 5,000 miles he continued to play both Gaelic football and Hurling. His team Al Reem Shamrocks even won a hurling tournament in Al Ain.

Now that he has graduated, Kevin will pursue mobile game development.

He had already been developing mobile games before his masters at MBZUAI.

“I want to go back into it, but this time use some of the skills that I learned during my time here at MBZUAI.

“For example, I learned about causality. In the games I would like to analyse the user data and discover what causes a user to exit a game early, and based on these discoveries make improvements to the game design,” he said.