Learning Artificial Intelligence

Photo by Henrik Dønnestad on Unsplash

A couple months back I was a teacher. I was teaching IB Theory of Knowledge in a small international school in São Paulo and I was quite happy there. The students who I collaborated with were motivated. The other teachers were wonderful. Thankfully, because of an unforeseeable consequence, I was fired without a proper warning. I say thankfully because I was able to reflect on my own path as an educator.

I got my BA in Liberal Arts in a small university in California, Soka University of America, back in 2011. But soon my program was over I returned to Brazil. I wrote previously about it, but in more practical terms it was just hard to apply my Liberal Arts skills, as amazing as they were, in a framework that was not prepared for it.

Lucky enough, I was hired to teach something I was extremely competent with, although I never taught before. In fact, teaching came to me naturally. It is less about techniques and it is more about finding motivation in your students, as well as giving the opportunity for them to tell me what they wanted to know.

Photo by Franki Chamaki on Unsplash

But as incredible as this opportunity it was, and the 4 year I dedicated my whole life to, I was caged there. I swore that I would provide Brazil the same learning experience I had at Soka University of America. And for a moment I thought that teaching at this sister school I would fulfill my oath. In the end I was filling the motions with joy, but with no purpose.

So now I find myself again as if I am returning from abroad. But instead of being paralyzed in depression, I know what to do this time. It came to be that artificial intelligence would be the path to grant educational experience to all people at a low cost. The caveat, though, is that I don’t know anything about creating AIs.

I’ve been always fascinated with Artificial General Intelligence and I read extensively about it, from Dannett to Kurzweil. But my fascination was literary. I create narratives that are interesting enough to imagine all the possibilities about AI, more in terms of identity than technology.

Now I want to build. It has been 2 weeks that I am immerse in learning all I can put my eyes on about artificial intelligence.

Of course learning anything about AI doesn’t seem to start on AI itself, but in Machine Learning and Artificial Neural Networks. The whole sort of codes, and Python, that I have to learn is exciting. And the possibility of dealing with future tech that is not even here yet makes me smile.

As I write I am writing my first tensorflow fueled Keras exercise experiment on Google Colaboratory borrowed GPU.

But it feels wrong somehow. I know the way to think about these processes is counter-intuitive, but never the less there are some aspects that have a bad aftertaste. It may be that a lot of it hangs on what is optimal, and that to me is contrary to our evolutionary coming to consciousness. But that only means that AI will evolve from a different tune.

But I am writer. So while I learn it, I decided to “document” my experience in a series of Medium essays. I will write ever so often about my progress and my thoughts on the process and about AI itself.

I am specially equipped to build interesting AI, though, because of my previous Liberal Arts experience. I already feel my critical tingle as I question the ideas of rewards and motivations, and aims, and purpose of AI. But I will take these ideas slowly through my essays.

More interestingly, I decided to start a project so far named Project Rousseau, after the Swiss philosopher. His education novel Emile is what made him the best “saint” for this Calvary. But is the AI, or the students, or the project, or myself, Emile? We will never know.

With the project I will drastically change the nature of education, and how we interact with artificial intelligence, to a point they won’t be called neither artificial nor intelligence. It will become something else entirely.

But first I must learn.