Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Fundamentals

I’m happy to share that last weekend I passed the Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Fundamentals certification exam.

As a rail security professional, why am I sitting for an AI-related exam when I’m not a data scientist?

The rail industry is moving more and more towards interconnected technical solutions. Of course, we are not yet seeing AI in safety-critical algorithms, but in non-safety-critical applications, AI is also being used in the railway industry. An example would be in the context of predictive maintenance. We will see much more of this development in the future, including safety-critical applications, once an approval scheme is discussed and defined.

At the time I graduated, machine learning was not really covered – it was a specialisation, but not yet integrated into the average computer science curriculum. I believe that in the future you won’t be able to understand software if you don’t understand AI to a certain level.

Of course, not everyone needs to understand AI algorithms to the same depth. It’s the same with cryptography: The number of people on the planet who fully understand the mathematics behind these algorithms is quite limited. Nevertheless, an understanding of the principles of cryptography to a certain depth is necessary to design secure systems.

Same with AI: the majority of us will not develop the basic algorithms, e.g. implement our own neural network. But the majority of engineers will be confronted with AI at some point in time, and then an understanding of the fundamentals of AI is mandatory in order to understand the functionality of a system and to judge about the security risks associated with it.

Thank you to my employer ICS – Informatik Consulting Systems for covering the cost of certification!