Those of you following Cross Trained Mind, or me directly, elsewhere are probably already aware, but I’m starting Michigan’s first graduate program in Artificial Intelligence, thanks to my admission to the University of Michigan – Dearborn. The Dearborn AI Research (DAIR) Institute has a lot of useful information for those who are interested.
While the program can be completed in three years when going full time, that is not something I can do. I have a toddler and a wife and plan to work full time throughout my studies. And we can’t forget my work on the Cross Trained mind platform. I’ll be taking a single class fall and spring semesters while taking the summers off. This will require me to be a student for the next five years.
What are the benefits of me doing this? I want to get as much out of each course as I can. I plan to:
- Extend all projects, place them on Git from the start, and keep a versioned history of all of my changes.
- Do a write-up or a tutorial for what I’m learning in my courses. This helps me learn better while helping others.
- Do an independent project for each course that helps me work toward my Master’s Project.
- Read a cognitive science book each semester. This is a good counterbalance to my courses, as this is a very technical degree. It also offers me more to write and speak about.
- Work toward my book ideas. I want to write books that help others learn about AI at a higher level.
- Get published in a magazine or journal. I want to go beyond my quote on forbes.com. I want to write a complete article and have it published.
- I want to recreate some of my projects in C. I want to have both C and Python in my portfolio as I respect them both very much for different reasons.
- While I’ll be taking the summers off to recharge, I will still read at least one relevant book and write about it here. Time permitting, I’ll extend some of my class projects more.
It’s going to be a busy five years. There are so many other things that we have planned during this time as well, so I’m very grateful to my wife for not objecting to my going back to school. There were plenty of reasons not to go, after all.
So what is the Cross Trained Mind getting out of this? The biggest thing is more content for the CTM site and channel. I want to bring you the best content I can and I feel that this program will help with that. The next biggest win for CTM is better content. The more I know, the better I can judge resources. The third thing I look forward to giving you are write-ups on various topics related to AI. My first will be released next month, but I want a complete set of resources to give you.
2021 is going to be the start of a great period of growth for the Cross Trained Mind, and me specifically. I hope you choose to continue on that journey with us. Always thinking, always learning!
