
Ask HN: What can I expect to get out of an AI education? - atarian
I&#x27;m interested in learning about AI because I think it&#x27;d be cool to create something that is somewhat intelligent. That&#x27;s what I&#x27;m hoping for. But I have a feeling that I&#x27;m going to end up getting a lot of abstract theory and only enough practical knowledge to create something basic like a recommender for related things on a website. So I&#x27;d really like to hear from other people who&#x27;ve done a masters or other specialization in AI:<p>What were you hoping for and what did you end up getting?
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htk
I have no degree on AI, or any sort of specialization, apart from studying by
myself. But I do work with AI, using different approaches and techniques.
/disclaimer

My view of AI is that it is as complex as it is fascinating. It might seem
easy to just download an artificial neural network library, feed data to it
and then see what it spits back, but what data should you feed it? And you
want it learn? Or should you use a genetic algorithm instead of neural
networks?

Those seem like easy questions to answer with a handful of math formulas, but
the formulas will help you more on giving you a firmer assessment on the scope
of the solution space, how to measure if it is really progressing, when the AI
is in learning plateaus, etc.

But the big reward is in how to creatively use AI. By "seeing" data in a new
way you can ask different questions, and might get some interesting answers.

I'm telling you all this because my view on how and when to use AI evolves
constantly to this days, and I've been working with it for about 7 years.

So start studying right now if you really like this field. Not only will the
formal AI education become easier, but you will probably be able to get more
from it if you get there with some experience.

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svalorzen
I have a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, and I'm planning to complete
my Master's degree in AI by September. Given what you just wrote I'm not sure
following AI courses at a University would be best for you, since as you
guess, there's lots of theory and not that much of practice.

In general, the practice you get is mostly related on the concepts -as in,
implement this methods on abstract data and see how they work-, but the whole
framework is setup so that you can in the end contribute to the advances in AI
and develop new methods. If your goal is simply 'create something that is
somewhat intelligent', I think you could easily read introductory books by
yourself and implement existing methods. It would be a more efficient use of
your time I believe.

In addition my particular Master was somewhat broad in scope, so that I
learned something from very different fields (Computer Vision, Machine
Learning, Decision Theoretic Control, Information Retrieval, Neural
Networks..), but in the end I still don't feel specialized, and I'll probably
(maybe not now, but after a couple of years' work) follow it up with a PHD.

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ilaksh
I can't pretend I have an advanced degree, or any degree actually, but I did
attend college, and I have looked at a number of different university
curricula. And I have been paying attention to the obvious headlines in
artificial intelligence and artificial general intelligence.

The courses that I saw and discussion that I have had with post-graduates in
AI or related fields is very different from the topics that were being
promoted by AI headlines or at AGI conferences.

If you really care about having the most relevant skills and information, in
this age of Google and other online search tools, you need to do research
yourself. You are almost guaranteed to NOT get the latest and most relevant
information if you limit yourself to the courses listed in some particular
university catalogue. Certainly the researchers at those schools don't.

If you do a masters and let your thesis be dictated by whatever your
professors think is relevant or that you should pursue, unless your professor
is really working on the leading edge of something, you are unlikely to be
there either.

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brudgers
No masters or other degree but I've been interested in AI since the AI summer
when LISP and Prolog were what the cool kids were wearing. At that point The
pattern was already set. In 1962 a chess playing computer was an AI
breakthrough. By 1987 I could buy a shrinkwrap chess game for my Amiga.

With time, today's AI comes to be seen as just clever programming and then
ordinary programming like any other algorithm. 2012 saw computers which could
beat any chess playing human in the world and the verdict was largely that
success was due to how much hardware had been thrown at the problem not great
AI.

That said, inference engines and logic programming and constraint networks are
really fascinating and these days the tools and books are a web address and a
modest download away.

Good luck.

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OWaz
I'm curious as to what others got out of a masters in Comp Sci. I didn't study
comp sci as an undergrad and sometimes feel like there are concepts I'm
completely ignorant of. I wonder if a masters in Comp Sci leads toward being
able to handle complicated application development.

