YEREVAN. -- No country in the world is yet leading in machine learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Armenia has a great potential in the area. Even with its limited resources, Armenia can still be in leading positions on the market, says Michael Vardanyan, General Manager of Armenian office  and CTO of PicsArt.

So far, the number of AI specialists in Armenia was very limited, though the demand for the professionals is growing rapidly. Together with BetConstruct and Ucom, PicsArt has initiated a six-month machine learning course for young professionals. Most of the 28 trainees have been already employed by the initiator companies, while the rest are open for new proposals.

PicsArt often organizes trainings for professionals for further recruitment purposes, Vardanyan told reporters in Yerevan.  This year, the company decided to organize a larger training program aiming to train specialists not only for PicsArt but other companies as well. The training was conducted by experts from Armenian Code Academy together with specialists invited from other countries.

According to the representative of Ucom, Zaven Navoyan, the company works with a huge amount of data, and the young professionals who joined the company after the training, will significantly contribute to the usage and analysis of this data.

Rafael Mkrtchyan from BetConstruct said the young people would work on creating new interesting product solutions, to make the company more competitive on the market.

Machine learning is a subdivision of artificial intelligence, which studies methods of constructing algorithms that can be trained. As explained by one of the course graduates Anush Tosunyan, machine learning is a science of teaching the machine to think and learn independently.

“We give the machine a direction so that it can learn to make its own decisions,” she said.

Anush is doing her Master’s at the American University of Armenia and has been working for BetConstruct for a month already.  According to her, despite the stereotype that programming is a “male” profession, it is not difficult for a woman to find her place in this area. Anush admits there are more men in programming than women, at least in Armenia, but there are no differences in the quality of work.

 “The employer does not care whether you are a man or a woman. If you can develop interesting projects, if you can prove you are smart, sex or age makes no difference,” she added. As Michael Vardanyan noted, the program will continue with new courses planned in the future. Moreover, it is planned to partner with universities to initiative larger-scale programs and trainings in AI and machine learning for young IT professionals.