Offered at no cost to low-income and diverse community high school students, the Mark Cuban Foundation's Artificial Intelligence Bootcamp will be held for the first time in San Antonio.

The San Antonio Bootcamp, one of more than 28 cities selected to host boot camps across the U.S. in the Fall of 2023, will take place over four consecutive Saturdays, starting on Oct. 14 and ending on Nov. 4.

The program will be held every Saturday from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. (CT). If accepted, the students must commit to attending all four sessions.

A vital bootcamp

“With AI being a relevant topic on many news sources, students will learn what artificial intelligence is and is not, where they already interact with AI in their own lives, and the ethical implications of AI systems including but not limited to TikTok recommendations, smart home assistants, facial recognition, and self-driving cars to name a few,” highlights a program description.

The program will also large language models, such as ChatGPT, which are changing life as we know it by answering questions, telling original stories, and even writing computer code.

Attendees will benefit from volunteer corporate mentor instructors with knowledge of AI, ML, and data science, who will help students quickly understand material typically taught at a higher academic level.

Curriculum

In four-hour sessions, students will work with open source tools every day to create their own AI applications related to machine vision, machine learning, natural language processing, and generative AI.

All of the bootcamp's curriculum materials will be provided free of charge, and it is training corporate volunteer mentors and reviewing applications for selected local students to attend the bootcamp.

The application for students and parents is now open at markcubanai.org/sanantoniopr.org. Students do not need any previous computer, programming, or robotics experience to apply and attend.

Camp origins

Founded by Mark Cuban in 2019, the AI Bootcamp initiative has hosted no-cost AI bootcamps for students in several U.S. cities, including Dallas, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Detroit, and Atlantic City, among others.

The Mark Cuban Foundation, which has impacted more than 900 students to date and aims to increase that number year-over-year, also announced that together with a local San Antonio partner will provide food, transportation, and access to laptops for students free of charge for the duration of the bootcamp.

“It was a lot of fun, I learned things I didn't even know were possible with A.I. and its real-world applications showed me how much our world will change,” said Brandon B., a 10th grade student and AI Bootcamp 2022 participant.

Get ready to level up your AI skills this fall with the Mark Cuban Foundation AI Bootcamp! Apply at https://t.co/hGhlNB952b #MCFAIBootcamps pic.twitter.com/AsF937bapD

— Mark Cuban Foundation AI Bootcamps (@markcubanai) May 31, 2023

Students interested in applying to the Mark Cuban Foundation AI Bootcamp must apply by Friday, Sept. 8, 2023.

There are two boot camps happening in Pennsylvania:

• Philadelphia, PA (CSL Behring)
• Pittsburgh, PA (Carnegie Learning) 

To view the 2023 camp locations and learn more about the Mark Cuban Foundation AI Boot Camps, click here.