Ngl I blindly chose this in the beginning. I didn’t have much of an idea what it was, but as the classes rolled in, it became more and more computer related, I wasn’t really the computer guy, but it was also interesting. So I stayed. In retrospect, I think I did it cause I like deep thinking and there’s a lot of logic in cs. I liked the puzzle math & open ended assignments that were just like “build this”, no hand holding, just creativity and giving it a shot. It was fun. Pass or fail, I didn’t care really. I viewed it more or less as an experiment. Let’s run this thing and see if it works, then ask why regardless, to learn more. Cool part was, I didn’t have to really wait for the professor, I could go off on my own and make experiments to learn outside of class with programming. It was like exercise but for the brain. Some people like crosswords, others like word searches, I like programming.

I am intrigued by AI for sure. However, I like behavioral & brain sciences too in general. Learning as a science is really interesting. The hidden layers in a deep neural net are complicated, as they are in the brain, and we don’t understand how it works really in biology. For example, mental illness is a classic case where you can go see several doctors about an issue and receive several different diagnoses for what you have. Why is that? It’s not really measurable aside from other metrics through blood or questionnaires, the data that’s being collected from patients who exhibit abnormal signs of functioning in the brain. But yet, it’s hard to prescribe correctly, because we don’t understand the brain. Even with unsupervised learning think of the implications of this with respect to the brain. If unsupervised models are clustering information for us, then some part of the brain is responsible for the compartmentalization and organization of new data flowing in through our senses into different parts of the brain where initial thought begins. We don’t tell our brain to consciously organize nor create labels, hence unsupervised, it’s happening unconsciously. So we now have plans of medication to take care of the unconscious processes that are regulating our biological systems, adjusting brain chemistry, and we have trained & experienced doctors of psychiatry observing patients to recommend the best medication. And still, mistakes are made!

These same brain limitations apply to anything we create. We have untapped potential in the brain that we cannot control consciously. But some can see for themselves in a risky situation such as a manic episode where they trip a circuit in the brain, they produce thoughts in an uncontrollable manner, and they cannot stop but they are aware. I know this because I am bipolar. I had a manic episode recently, I’d never had one before but I like to be curious and coming out of a cs degree, I had tons of thoughts. I reached a point called mania, where I could not control the brain or thoughts being produced from it. Oddly I was channeling it to positive ideas such as thinking of Newton’s laws and asking questions about the basis of logic. That is to say, for a short time, I really was thinking like a computer imo. My brain was the processor and in mania, it burns so much energy, that it traverses down to the physical operating system of the body itself, to where symptoms of tight chest or shaking start to unfold. It was interesting having these thoughts as well as those relating to AI because this is probably how the AI will think. It is some computer after all.