Home-Made Self-Driving Car

Young hacker George Hotz (alias geohot, known for unlocking the iPhone) built a self-driving car in just a couple of months using machine learning technology in his own garage. He formed a company called Comma.ai to create a cheap ($999) driver assistance product. Even though Hotz canceled the product after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) showed their concern. It is still a very interesting and fascinating technical achievement!   

Second Industrial Revolution

The founding executive editor of Wired magazine, Kevin Kelly, shared his observation and vision about AI in this inspiring TED Talks- "How AI can bring on a second Industrial Revolution". He analyzed the features about the AI development and predicted the inevitable trends of AI technology. His talk identifies the upcoming challenges and opportunities we are going to encounter in the next 20 years! 

Welcome to the Artificial Intelligence Research Group!

Welcome to the Artificial Intelligence Research Group! The goals of the group are to tap into the cutting-edge academic & commercial resources of Artificial Intelligence (AI), follow up the development & trends of the new technologies, acquire the theoretical background and practical skills of machine learning, and apply machine learning algorithms to solve real-world problems. We are also looking forward to participating in some external STEM competitions and activities.

Most of the early-stage research activities will be focusing on the learning curve of the cutting-edge AI technology. Hands-on mini-projects will be used to help you moving along the learning curve. It will include 

• basic concepts of AI (definition, background, scope, structure, methods & applications)
• basic neural networks and learning algorithms,
• programming languages & machine learning libraries, 
• deep learning algorithms, and
• brainstorming the potential real-world applications.

The second-stage research activities will be focusing on a few challenging research projects . We will divide our group into a few teams (depends on the size of the group) to tackle each challenge. These projects may lead to competitions (such as Google Science Fair), poster presentations in professional conferences (such as IEEE ISEC), publishing of research papers in research journals (such as NHSJS), class projects in Advanced STEM Research (see previous STEM course blog), filing patents or commercial applications. Only sky will be the limit!

Most of our "meetings" will be online through the blogs or any electronic media, so you will be invited to be one of the authors of the Artificial Intelligence Research Group blog (http://stem-ai.blogspot.com/). You are encouraged to contribute to the blog frequently by posting and commenting on new development, video links, programming tutorials, study notes, and research results. You should also visit the blog frequently for information, activities or assignments. The blog will be our main playground for collaboration. If you haven't received the invitation, please let me know as soon as possible. We will also arrange some "meet-up time" and "workshops" at school at everyone's convenience. Our first "kick-off meeting will be at 3:00 pm next Wednesday (01/18/2017). Feel free to invite your friends to explore and join the group. Bring with you your dreams, ideas, and questions!

In the mean time, please enjoy the videos I have posted below, and share your thoughts or post your notes. These videos will provide you the basic concepts of artificial intelligence (or machine learning).

 How to make a neural network in your bedroom

 How Does Deep Learning Work?

If you come across any good video, please share with us. I hope to meet you all in our kick-off meeting! 

Happy Researching!