Some Formal Sucking-Up
Draft personal statement for AI MSc course at Edinburgh Uni. It’s still rough and many bits are cheesy. Like some red leicester you’ve left out of the fridge for days. Feedback would be appreciated!
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Ever since I discovered computer programming, my imagination has been captured by its complexity, its
possibilities, and above all its beauty. Perfectly interlocking algorithms, functions calling
each other and themselves, loops repeating hundreds of times in an eyeblink: it seems to me
that computer science is an art as well.
Studying computer science at undergraduate level has done nothing but make me realise how deep the field is, how many applications it has in the modern world and how much remains to be discovered. During the course of my degree I became more and more interested in the area of artificial intelligence; the University of York has a wide selection of modules available in this area and so I was able to pursue my interest by studying knowledge representation and non-standard computation. Artificial intelligence manifests some of the most difficult unsolved problems and some of the most inspiring potential applications of all of computer science. Since before computers were a reality we have been imagining intelligent robots capable of simulating the human brain, but we are still so far away from this goal and there are so many unanswered questions. In 1967 Marvin Minsky said that “within a generation… the problem of creating artificial intelligence [would] substantially be solved.” Now, 42 years later, we are still realising the true extent and complexity of AI. Minsky is said to have assigned the challenge of implementing computer vision to a graduate student as a summer project; now major universities teach modules about the foundations of this problem.
I have continued to explore AI through my third-year project, in which I am studying a type of neural network called a CMM (Correlation Matrix Memory). I am implementing a visual interactivity layer for the CMM libraries developed by the University of York’s Advanced Computer Architectures research group and using this to explore the neural networks’ behaviour. I am also experimenting with applying evolutionary algorithms to CMMs for pattern recognition.
I have decided to apply to study AI at Edinburgh because the University offers some of the most well-established and interesting learning opportunities in the country, if not in the world. During the course of my degree I have become more and more interested in the research aspects of computer science, as opposed to the industrial and engineering side of the field; having taken both modules in software design (formal specification of systems, interface usability and the modelling and refinement lifecycles) and more abstract concepts (theory of computation, artifical intelligence and knowledge representation) I realised that I am definitely more interested in exploring the boundaries of AI and problem-solving.
I first became interested in artificial intelligence at a young age through the its many representations in popular culture and science fiction (2001: A Space Odyssey’s HAL 9000 being one of the most well-known examples). The idea of the intelligent computer, the thinking machine constructed not by nature but by artifice, is a deep and affecting idea for many people, and it was only when I began to further study computer science that I realised how complex and difficult the challenge of implementing it really is. We will never quickly hack togther a consciousness; even the limited AI we have today has been the product of decades of research and analysis. Nevertheless, the field is moving very fast, and the more computer science in general progresses the more AI will benefit. Automobile electronic stability control, face recognition and tracking over CCTV, using agents to search the Internet, search and problem-solving by heuristics instead of formal proof: intelligent systems are weaving more and more into our everyday lives. AI is one of the sharpest cutting edges of computer science, and I am fascinated by the possibilities and the horizons it offers.”
