Expert: George Moustris - 11/1/2009

Question
Hi George,

My experience is in software development/programming. How can I learn AI on my own? Are there some pre-requisites or subjects that must be learned first? I have read about automata, and theory of compilers when I studied computer science. Sometimes I read about AI topics, but cannot see how they can be applied to solve a problem, or how can they be implemented in software...

I'm all ears for your suggestions. Thank you in advance.

Sincerely,

Richard

Answer
Hi Richard,

AI is a vast discipline with many fields and subfields. If i could use a metaphor for your question, it would be this: "How can i learn Medicine on my own?". You see the basic problem? You must find an AI field and specialize in it. You can't simple learn AI because it would take years just to skim through the topics and get a rough idea of each one. However, with your background i'd suggest you focus on algorithms, algorithmic complexity, expert systems and computational intelligence. Computational intelligence (ca) would be my safest bet since its very interesting and an active research field. Furthermore it has clear application on several problems. CA mainly consists of Fuzzy logic, Artificial Neural Networks and Genetic Algorithms. You can start reading on these. A word of heed however; nearly all AI fields are heavily mathematical (some even more than others, and some being completely abstact math) thus a good math background is a must.

Best
G.