Kesk’IA, a program of excellence, detects future talents in artificial intelligence

“A first !, Ibrahima Diakité, 26, was immediately enthusiastic when he discovered the Kesk’IA program of excellence through a post on LinkedIn by Morad Attik, former mathematics teacher and co-founder of the Evolukid educational platform. Kesk’IA offers a friendly competition between students in IT and digital sectors from working-class neighborhoods, around the design of public utility projects developed using artificial intelligence. After local finals, seven territories (Trappes, Meaux, Lens, Nantes, Rouen, Grigny, and Marseille) compete on Saturday June 16 at the VivaTech show in the semi-finals in Paris. The final will oppose the three best prototypes on June 23.

“This allows young people to immerse themselves directly in the professional world, and most importantly, to be able to provide solutions to local authorities, using artificial intelligence.”

Ibrahima, a student of the Kesk’IA program

at franceinfo

“It is very rare for a student to have this possibility”, underlines Ibrahima. And opportunities, Ibrahima is used to seizing them on the fly. After the baccalaureate, he began a career in finance which he continued in the United States after winning a scholarship as a “student-athlete”. [étudiant-athlète]in Los Angeles. “I was playing with the college football team and they were paying my college scholarship,” he explains. To benefit from the program, Ibrahima had to send videos to university coaches. “It matched, because we are the best in footballhe smiles without malice. It allows us to export ourselves easily”.

Today, a graduate in data science and data engineering, Ibrahima has been selected with ten other young people for the local competition in Trappes, where he is from. They were divided between three POCs chosen by the city: Predictive canteen, Safer road and C Du Propre. “A POC, ‘proof of concept’, it is to prove that a concept works without allocating a lot of resources and time, to show that it works in order to perhaps be able to raise funds and develop the website, the software”, Ibrahima explains.

Food waste, road safety, waste management…

He worked on Predictive Cantine to fight against food waste, which “represents 10% of greenhouse gas emissions, i.e. 16 billion losses each year in France, a huge challenge, he points out. In the town of Trappes, you have a central canteen which cooks for 40 canteens, from kindergarten to middle school. Wastage is mainly due to the satisfaction rate. If the kids don’t like the meal, they don’t eat.” His team therefore relied on real data, “what’s left on the plates”, so that the central canteen avoids these foods. “To fight effectively against food waste is to fight effectively against global warming”insists Ibrahima who takes the subject very seriously.

Predictive Cantine did not win the local final which took place on May 30 in Trappes. C Du Propre was chosen, a POC intended to identify and geolocate waste photographed by the inhabitants of the city in order to allow the cleaning services of the town hall to optimize collection. “We remove the human processing side which can be very time-consuming from an administrative point of view, explains Sakina Faouzi, one of the students working on the project. If there are reports that come up often, we will have a ‘heat map’ [carte des points chauds] which will alert on the points of vigilance and make the journey of the agents more efficient. This is a huge potential from an ecological point of view”she proudly boasts.

“IT, I saw it as an inaccessible area.”

Sakina Faouzi, a student of the Kesk’IA program

at franceinfo

After an ES baccalaureate, a DUT in business and administration management, and an eco-management license, the young woman explains that she still did not know what she wanted to do. She took a gap year to reflect, “to have the feet a little more in the world of work and the head a little more rested”, she says. A marketing assistant, a colleague advises her to take an interest in data. “He hit the nail on the head”, Sakina laughs. The rigor, the satisfaction of finding solutions, mastering tools that are not accessible to everyone, learning a new language, “a separate language”the very open professional opportunities… The combo seduces Sakina who is now finalizing a Master 2 in Data-Management in a business school and is, next door, on a work-study program as a data analyst in an entity of the Saint-Gobain group.

She too discovered Kesk’IA via a post by Morad Attik, project director. His working group notably included a 38-year-old mother, a statistics engineer who had returned to school, and two juniors, Omar, 16, and Lokmane, 18, “nuggets” who had nothing to envy in skills to their elders, explains Sakina. “It was super pleasant, there was a very good atmosphere. We worked a lot but also laughed a lot”says the student.

“Worked a lot” is an understatement but neither Ibrahima, nor Sakina, nor the other nine selected have shrunk from the workload. “Weekly, we were maybe around 8 p.m., from February until the end of May. We were studying next door, we met on Saturdays. But it was interesting, so we don’t count “, smiles Ibrahima. “It wasn’t easy, between work-study, school, private lifesays Sakina. I’m in an intense period between the finals, the return of my research paper… But I said to myself, if I don’t do it now, it will be much more difficult to do it later”.

A great company as a mentor

The students were not left alone, however. “This initiative set up by the startup Evolukid, we liked because it corresponds to our vision of innovation to advance important topics within an ecosystem”, explains Grégoire du Peloux, director of innovation at Tata Consultancy Service (TCS), which has joined the program in Trappes. The company provided eight senior mentors to mentor the three groups. After initial training in AI in the form of a bootcamp (a training camp that lasted a week, 7 hours a day), they followed the students to help them take a step back, ask themselves the right questions to what will it be used for, to know who to interview to understand what the problems are, where and how to look for the necessary data… For C Du Propre, “train the algorithms on photo bases to teach them to recognize things as simple as a green, blue, yellow garbage bag, depending on the city, it can have a different meaning, etc.”, gives the example of Grégoire du Peloux.

Helping the community to do better to better preserve the planet is not the only objective of the project, of course. “It is also to arouse vocations by exampleexplains the manager. It starts from a parallel which is that, in the suburbs, the stars, for example, in Trappes, are Jamel Debbouze and Nicolas Anelka. It can be stars of showbiz, TV, football players, famous rappers”.

“If it’s the only element of identification for young people, it’s a bit limited because obviously not everyone is destined to become a great football player or a great rapper.”

Grégoire du Peloux, Head of Innovation at TCS

at franceinfo

“So we also need stars in artificial intelligence to create vocations”, concludes Grégoire du Peloux. Ibrahima has graduate parents, Sakina does not. Omar is just 16 years old but is already in the 1st year of a mathematics/computer science license. The idea is to “show that when you live in these neighborhoods, you can succeed and you can become a star and go to work in big companies”he pleads.

Even if he is not a finalist, Ibrahima is delighted with the Kesk’IA experience: “It opens up prospects of knowing what is really doable with artificial intelligence, because when you’re studying, you’re in a fairly theoretical course”. He will of course support his ex-competitors on Saturday and quietly continue his interviews to choose the company in which he wishes to engage. “What will prevail will be the choice of the field, the possibility of increasing skills and the framework, what we will concretely offer to employees”, he points out. He has already received several offers. Sakina, she will focus on her job search at the start of the school year. For now, she is focused on the semi-finals on Saturday “that we are going to win”, she assures. It is also ready to get involved in the network that the city of Trappes hopes to set up following this first edition of Kesk’IA. “We would be the first ambassadors. The idea is to exchange with the youngest, to introduce them to this area and show them that it is possible”she develops.

NB: the students of Trappes won their ticket for the final on June 23.