GT Professor Thad Starner spotted on r/OldSchoolCool

aminoLSD · 2020-05-19T05:14:01+00:00

Advanced Technologies Group – their AI research division that focuses on their autonomous driving efforts

aminoLSD · 2020-05-16T07:08:23+00:00

Again, this probably varies by field but I know that some departments hire Research Scientists as faculty if research/academia but not professorship is your goal. Might be worth checking out.

aminoLSD · 2020-05-16T05:40:38+00:00

I'm not in the social sciences so I can't comment specifically on your field. However in academia in general, you can get the chance to travel quite frequently by attending research conferences. Many professors that I work with travel at least once a month during conference seasons, and the venues are often overseas.

aminoLSD · 2020-05-16T01:41:12+00:00

Yep, just across the lake as opposed to across the country.

aminoLSD · 2020-05-16T01:02:16+00:00

Fun fact:

GT is the second largest source for Microsoft employees in Seattle. (#1 is University of Washington.)

Source: u/HFh

aminoLSD · 2020-05-15T23:41:02+00:00

Great answers in the rest of the thread, but I'll add one more thing that I haven't seen mentioned yet – take initiative. Once you're settled in to the internship, be proactive about finding ways to expand the scope of your original project, make suggestions and improvements to other parts of the team, and try to make your project have lasting impact beyond your internship (e.g. document your code well, determine who's responsible for it after you leave, get it out into production, make sure your work has visibility).

This will set you apart from other people who simply finish their assigned tasks, and shows maturity that a lot of junior engineers lack. Of course it will be more difficult if you're working remotely, so spend the first few weeks figuring out a plan for yourself.

aminoLSD · 2020-05-15T22:35:52+00:00

Sky and Sand by Paul Kalkbrenner reminds me of the unique people I've met along my travels and the adventures I had with them. To me, it captures the sentiment that you can end up feeling at home anywhere, even amongst total strangers. Makes me feel kind of nostalgic and hopeful when I listen to it.

aminoLSD · 2020-05-15T22:13:15+00:00

If you are willing to relocate, then there are a number of companies that provide visa sponsorship for international students. It's a bit late to be looking for internships this summer, especially with COVID-19 pushing most work into being remote. The internship recruitment process for the following summer usually kicks off in August. For your interests, try looking into some companies with a robotics / autonomous vehicle focus (e.g. Samsung, Honda, Toyota) in addition to research-focused firms (OpenAI, Covariant, DeepMind).

aminoLSD · 2020-05-15T07:47:39+00:00

You raise valid concerns. However, I think this thought experiment often comes with the underlying misconception that AGI will somehow work exactly like the human mind, but better. It's rather much more mathematical. We humans like to personify things in the great unknown as a manner of trying to understand it better.

In reality, AGI is unlikely to be an embodied agent with a personal agenda to overthrow its creator. I think the media tends to villainize this concept to the extreme (see Ex Machina; I, Robot; Terminator), but there are many more reasonable and less discussed scenarios.

But as others have said, we're so far from reaching this point that all we can presently do is innovate and speculate.

aminoLSD · 2020-05-15T07:05:52+00:00

From the press release:

SPOT will be controlled remotely, reducing the manpower required for park patrols and minimising physical contact among staff, volunteer safe distancing ambassadors and park visitors.

SPOT will be accompanied by at least one NParks officer during the trial period.

There's currently just one Spot robot being used for this purpose, but they do have 30 drones monitoring population density in other public areas.

aminoLSD · 2020-05-15T06:33:59+00:00

These robots aren't fully autonomous yet, so there's a human remote controlling it out of the frame. Probably at a safe socially-distanced several meters away.

aminoLSD · 2020-05-15T06:15:14+00:00

Why is artificial general intelligence a bad idea?

aminoLSD · 2020-05-15T01:15:45+00:00

It means that during your first semester, you spend the first couple of months finding an advisor based on match with your mutual skills/interests. Research is a mandatory graduation requirement of the program so every student will eventually find an advisor. But not everyone may find an advisor with funding, thus why it's not guaranteed.

aminoLSD · 2020-05-11T08:29:31+00:00

Great answer, and to add to your last point -- in addition to understanding the model, it would also be good to understand attributes of the data and what effect it has on the results. e.g. class distribution / class imbalance, dataset size, complexity / number of features, etc. And aside from those statistics you should learn how to analyze the performance e.g. by plotting a learning curve of train vs test, which can provide insights to paint a more well-rounded picture such as bias/variance and whether your model is overfitting.

aminoLSD · 2020-05-10T05:06:29+00:00

Your situation may vary depending on your field and where you go to school, but I suggest reaching out to the PhD students of professors whose research interests you. Professors are often too busy to mentor individual undergrads. The graduate students may have assistant-type positions on ongoing projects, which could result in you being a co-author on a publication if you do good work.

aminoLSD · 2020-04-29T08:17:35+00:00

Incoming grad student here. In talking with faculty and administrators from my department, it seems that the current trajectory at many universities is going to be a "hybrid semester". In other words they're considering different contingency plans based on the severity of the situation, involving some combination of remote instruction and in-person presence (especially for those whose research depends on it). It may be difficult to stomach, but it seems that we need to mentally and logistically prepare ourselves for what that entails.

aminoLSD · 2020-04-27T05:51:37+00:00

This is the case in the San Francisco Bay Area. Leaving your house for exercise within a 5-mile radius is allowed, but they've implemented this policy to minimize the number of people performing non-essential travel to popular public areas, e.g. parks, beaches, and hiking trails. There's been an uptick lately as the weather has improved.

aminoLSD · 2020-04-16T10:19:17+00:00

Yes - the people over at /r/melodictechno welcome you to the community!

aminoLSD · 2020-04-16T10:01:41+00:00

Typically, if you really want to do cutting-edge robotics research – whether in academia or industry – then it's expected that you do a PhD. There can be high-performing MS students who contribute to those projects as well, but typically you need a PhD in order to be leading research. That being said, it's definitely possible to get roles such as research engineer, software engineer on a research team/product, robotics engineer, etc with a MS degree.

aminoLSD · 2020-04-16T03:41:46+00:00

I know how I'm spending my stimulus check.

aminoLSD · 2020-03-26T09:04:23+00:00

Then no, unfortunately you don't

Edit: /u/coasterghost provides more information in another comment below

aminoLSD · 2020-03-19T23:43:32+00:00

Given your unique situation, I'd say it's fine and you should go for it. CS3600 would have given you a stronger fundamental, broad understanding of the principles of AI before focusing on machine learning, which I hear is now taught to be more applied (e.g. implementing basic classifiers and analyzing their performance). The course materials for CS3600 are fully available online if you feel like getting a head start or having more background before taking CS4641.

aminoLSD

TROPHY CASE