Essential Guidelines for Humanitarians AI Fellows: Learning by Doing | Prof Bear's Onboarding Guide

Essential Guidelines for Humanitarians AI Fellows: Learning by Doing | Professor Bear's Onboarding Guide https://youtu.be/TJNuzfm2x-U

Professor Bear explains the Humanitarians AI Fellows program, an educational initiative designed to bridge the gap between graduation and employment. This comprehensive guide covers everything new fellows need to know about program requirements, weekly deliverables, and project expectations.

Key points covered:

Contact HR directly for all inquiries, not Professor Bear Commit to 20 hours weekly as required by law Create weekly video reports demonstrating your progress Document your work on GitHub with detailed instructions Maintain active participation in meetings and project development Initial Volunteer Agreements are one month, with possible two-month renewals based on performance

This program emphasizes learning through practical application rather than theoretical study. Fellows gain valuable skills by working on real projects while receiving guidance from project managers and peers.

Connect with Humanitarians AI: https://www.humanitarians.ai/ https://www.youtube.com/@humanitariansai https://github.com/Humanitariansai/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/105696953/ https://music.apple.com/us/artist/humanitarians-ai/1781414009 https://open.spotify.com/artist/3cj3R4pDpYQHaWx0MM2vFV

Transcript

A lightly formatted transcript of the video, with timestamps so you can jump to any section on YouTube.

[0:01] Okay, Professor Bear here. I'm going to go through getting a volunteer agreement with humanitarians. Um, so you should watch this if you want to get a volunteer agreement with humanitarians. So, uh, first thing to do is to, uh, look at our website and our fellows program. This has HR's email, which is just HR humanitarians. Reach out to them. Do not reach out to me. I get 20 emails a day for people reaching out to me to get volunteer agreements. And I'm not HR. Do not reach out to me. Uh look at our our um GitHub for projects. Look at our YouTube in particular. There's in particular two uh playlists.

[0:56] One is for humanitarians fellows. This is, for example, a video that I'm doing right now will go up on this playlist. This is sort of what you need to know, you know, from if you're going to make your video, how to use a tool like Adobe Rush, Premier Rush, which is a free tool. It's also especially free for Northeastern students. Actually, all of the Adobe Creative Suite is free for a year after you graduate for Nor Eastern. But Adobe Rush is I think free for everyone. But these are tips like you know how to write your YouTube title, how to clean up your sound, how to fix

[1:33] Your audio, all that kind of stuff. So this is this is not of general YouTube interest. This is of interest in particular to potential uh humanitarian scholars. Another important one is this one here. So these are examples of weekly reports. Sometimes your report may be more, you know, every two weeks or so. That depends on what you're doing. So, for example, here is somebody working on data validation. They wrote a little collab notebook. Our entire philosophy is learning by doing. So, there's a discussion of the theory. What is bias? How do we detect bias? But the main thing is to to actually detect bias in a data set as an example of how

[2:17] To do that. So my guess is when this video is made going through this notebook, this is probably a 20-minute video and that would count for a couple weeks. We expect about 5 to 10 minutes of high quality video a week explaining your work. But this one may be a 20 minute or maybe two parts. Maybe 10 minutes one week, 10 minutes another week. But that's a discussion between you and your project manager. What are reasonable deliverables? Remember this is an educational program. It's we don't make things. We don't get things out of this. This is for your education. Continue to learn until you get that

[2:57] Great job. So, because it's a volunteer agreement, it's at will, meaning we can end it at any time and you can end it at any time. We do appreciate it though if you do get a job because that's the entire point is to get you to that next step that you let us know because if you're working with other people then those other people may be depending on something that you do and then we can find somebody to to fit in that role. So we hope you get a job and this is where this is different from a lot of volunteering. Where this is different

[3:29] From a lot of volunteering is most companies will do not a volunteer agreement but a volunteer contract and that contract will obligate you to be with them for 6 months. So if Amazon comes in two weeks and offers you a job, you will be bound to that that other company as a volunteer. And we don't want that. We want as much as we may love all our volunteers, we want to get rid of them and get them onto their next stage in life. So this is an at will thing and it's at will both ways. So what we primarily care about is that you comply with the O

[4:08] Requirements of OPT and do your 20 hours of STEM related degree related work a week. You will have to file weekly reports or we will end our part of the agreement. Um, but if you do that, if you make a good faith effort, then it's a learning experience. You are going to learn a lot. I can give you hundreds of testimonials of people who've learned more in this program than they did in their master's degree program, but hopefully you're not in it that long. Hopefully you're in itist for you know a month or two or three and then you're on to that great job that that's

[4:49] You know why you got your degree is not to volunteer here but to go on for a great job. So let's go on to Nenah slides. So, email HR, don't email me, look at the website, subscribe to the YouTube, and uh look at the current contracts. So, to get a a volunteer agreement, which is going to satisfy OPT, we're going to need some EAD information for you. And um again check everything with your you know the equivalent of your school's OS office that this satisfies your visa stuff. We do not answer any of those questions. That's between you and your school and hopefully your school says yes.

[5:42] Um but uh um you know uh they probably will because this is a this is what OPT is for. Optional practical training. We are continuing to train you in your chosen profession. This is literally what this program is about is what humanitarians is doing. So they should be fine with it. again check everything with with your your equivalent of your OS office. So you'll need a project means before you even start. So what you should not do is like not know any of the projects ask for agreement tomorrow. You need to pretty much a couple weeks before you think you're going to get your AD card.

[6:31] You're going to need to check out the project so you have a good sense of what you want to do. Because if you join a project and say I want a volunteer agreement tomorrow, it won't happen. Uh typically HR will need at least a week to do that. So you need to let them know ahead of time. I'm going to get my EAD card at this date and this is the project that I've scoped out, I've looked at, I like, I'm committed to, you know, that kind of thing. Again, this is for your education. It's continue your education until you get the great job. entirely what we're

[7:05] About. But to satisfy OPT, you're you're going to have to, you know, have the EAD card degrees. And again, I do not deal with that. HR deals with that. So if you are do this well for a month, so the first agreement is one month and then if that is satisfying and basically satisfactory, it means you're making a good fantic. You're filling out your reports. You're you're working on your your your videos and your research and your projects and you're making progress. Doesn't mean you're perfect and you don't make mistakes. It means you're making a good faith effort to learn. Where it's different from this in a class is

[7:52] You you're not really failing this. The only way you fail this is to not do it. If you're making good faith effort and learning and doing that thing, also if what you do is just send out a bazillion resumes and don't continue to learn while you're looking for a job, it's going to make your job search turner. We've seen that with lots and lots and lots of people. So, take this opportunity to upskill yourself. This is what it's about. So, you're going to need some some details uh for from HR. Again, this is this is uh an email that you'll get with little details of what information we

[8:35] Need from you in order to get a volunteer agreement. you for most of the volunteers, 90 plus% of them are going to be expected to do a weekly report in video format on our YouTube of your research and what you did. What's interesting about our stuff is it's a lot rawer than a lot of other YouTube channels because it's a it's about, you know, I'm getting stuck because I can't afford an open AI key. How do I download a hugging face model to correct that? As opposed to sort of an idealized version of the world. But whatever your struggles are, whatever your learning is, that's what

[9:20] Goes in your video. And then you also have to back that up on the YouTube on not on the YouTube on the GitHub. So for example here uh the video will be made on this but then there should be a link back to because the entire point of this is for you to learn by doing but then if somebody watches your video for them to learn by doing as well and it's much easier they can you know you can lally just hit run all and run this notebook and then look at it and change it and change this line of code and change this and change that.

[9:57] This is what this is about. It's about learning by doing. And so these videos like to make a video on this. You can really talk about this is theory. So you talk about the theory and why you believe this and why this makes sense. And then it'll get down to some actual code and doing things. And then you'll look at the code and do that and look at example and walk somebody through the example. It's pretty straightforward. You're basically learning something. Then after you learn something, you teach what you learn to somebody else. So, uh there's going to be a renewal requirements. Basically, if you fill out

[10:40] Your reports weekly, doing your renewal chronis will be easy because all that data is in your first four reports that you get. You just combine them and do it. Do not ask for special exceptions like I am losing two days because I applied yesterday for a volunteer agreement and I need it tomorrow. That just doesn't work. So don't do that. You're responsible a week before trying to get a new volunteer agreement to let HR know that you need it. Don't expect it to Don't expect HR to instantly, oh, my volunteer agreement expires tomorrow. I need a contract tomorrow. Give them a heads up. Just common sense.

[11:26] So, your project leader and you will work with you on exactly what your role is. You have a lot of autonomy within the framework of the project. Talk to other volunteers as well. Ask them what they're doing. Work with them. Pair with them. Again, we are not producing something in terms of a product. This is an educational experience. So, as long as it fits your your uh degree terms of it's related to your degree and it's a positive educational experience, it's something that works within the constraints of what we do. So you are going to have to report weekly for for this SVP portal. This is your

[12:14] OS. It's not us. Do not come to me with these questions. Do not come to HR with these questions. This is for your school. That's what your school does. Your school has a bunch of lawyers who run their equivalent of an OS department, which is basically visa stuff. They are the experts. We are not the experts. We do not answer those questions. And this is a volunteer thing. Difference between this is is this is at will which means you can leave at any time. We can also on our end stop the agreement at any time. There's no monetary compensation, no benefits. It's all about an educational experience.

[12:54] The positive part about that is we sort of want to get rid of you because getting rid of you means you've gone on to that next stage in life where you have that nice job. So for recommendation letter do not ask recommendation letters of people that you actually didn't work with. This is very common with me. I don't directly work with somebody and somebody wants a recommendation letter from me. Well, I don't know you. I haven't worked with you. So how can I say anything about you? So work but you may have worked with a very experienced mentor in industry. You may have worked a very

[13:31] Expensive mentor at Nor Eastern another professor. Those are the people you should ask questions u recommendations from. So if I haven't worked with you, I'm not going to give you a letter other than you had a volunteer agreement between this date and that date at humanitarians. If I have work with you, then that's a different story and we can talk about that individually. Okay. So that's it. Watch these videos. I I think a lot of people who send me emails daily have not bothered to go here. have not bothered to go here. Have not bothered to go here. It's basically my friend told me about blah blah blah

[14:17] Blah. I'm going to email Professor Bear directly. Don't do that. Read. Look at this. Talk to people about their experience who are if you got a somebody in the program is telling you about the program. Well, talk to that person about what they do. Okay. So, that's it. Again, if you've watched this for 15 minutes and you are uh not a humanitarian fellow, I'm sorry because this has nothing to do with you. But if you are looking for a volunteer agreement, a volunteer relationship with humanitarians AI, then this is essential to understand what this thing is about. So this is what this video is about. So

[15:04] Basically, I don't have to explain the same thing 12 times a day. Okay, take care. I'll probably do another one tomorrow on some other question that came up. Okay, that's it. I'll see you later.