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The AI Playground Workshop Series gives Saint Mary’s University students opportunities to explore artificial intelligence through free, hands-on sessions led by industry professionals and AI experts.
Students will learn how to use emerging AI tools, build practical projects, strengthen their digital skills, and explore how AI can support their studies, careers, and entrepreneurial ideas. No previous AI experience is required for most workshops.
Session Description: Most people experience AI through a browser and a monthly subscription. This hands-on workshop introduces another approach: running capable AI models directly on your own laptop, with no API key, usage fees, or data leaving the room.
Students will set up a local AI model stack and build a small retrieval agent that can answer questions using their own documents. The session will also compare local and cloud-based AI, including performance, cost, privacy, hardware requirements, and the limitations of local models.
Speaker Bio:
Eduard Kakosyan is the Lead AI Developer at AI-First Consulting, a Halifax-based firm that helps organizations across Atlantic Canada adopt artificial intelligence. He graduated from Dalhousie University with a Bachelor of Computer Science (Co-op) in 2025 and works primarily with Go, Python, and TypeScript. His current focus is running AI models locally on organization-owned hardware, particularly for organizations whose data cannot be sent to the cloud.
