Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Technology Enthusiasts: 3 Action Items to Bring a Spark to Your Company



Siri, Cortana, IBM Watson, Viv…Humans are building smarter machines to better serve the needs of…human beings. Artificial intelligence has become so hot a topic that every technology enthusiast should be curious about. As a grad student at the Northwestern Medill IMC program, I have found two articles that you, as a technology enthusiast, might find interesting.

An article by Will Knight from MIT Technology Review talks about deep learning and misunderstandings some people have on artificial intelligence. In an interview with the publication, Bengio, a professor of computer science at the University of Montreal, states that although deep learning helps make some progress in developing artificial intelligence, machines are still far from being intelligent or threatening human beings. Unsupervised learning and natural language understanding are two major unsolved problems with developing a revolutionary AI. AI is cool and could change the world, but people shouldn’t be over-excited or overwhelmed because it’s still at its baby stage.



A second article by Heather Kelly from CNN Money talks about Mark Zuckerberg’s perspective on artificial intelligence. Mr. Zuckerberg agrees that unsupervised learning is the key to advance artificial intelligence and plans to build his personal AI assistant this year. He believes that self-learning AI still has long way to go and people shouldn’t be afraid of it. Instead, it’s possible to make good use of it.

As a grad student at Northwestern, with a strong interest in technology and data analytics, I recommend the following three action items to anyone who shares similar passion:
  • Think AI - Artificial intelligence is worth noticing, learning, and investing or contributing in other ways.
  • Grow Together - Researchers and engineers have made some progress but still far from making real intelligent machines.
  • Be Fearless - Artificial intelligence is not evil or dangerous, at least not at this moment.
Whether you are a student, an employee, an employer or an entrepreneur, as long as you are a technology enthusiast, these three tips will make you stand out from your peers and give you a head start when you develop a career in TECHNOLOGY.



Yuchen Luo @blazermania1

Yuchen Luo is a full-time student in the Medill Integrated Marketing Communications program. After completing his undergrad at USC majoring in Business Administration and minoring in Sports Media, Yuchen worked for a Santa Monica ad agency where he analyzed consumer, competitive and campaign performance data to provide insightful media planning recommendations. This experience opens up his interest in the application of data analytics in marketing and advertising. Beyond data analytics, he is developing his new found interest in coding by taking online coding courses and training programs. He is super passionate about technology and his long-term career goal is to help a technology startup succeed with his all-around skill sets in data analytics, marketing, and strategy consulting.


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