How to be a highly-qualified A.I scientist?

[little_tiger]

How to be a highly-qualified A.I scientist?

hi all,
i am a freshmen Computer Science student at a community college. i am trying to be an A.I scientist in the future. How do I need to prepare to become a top-notch A.I scientist since the beginning?

 

[davee123]

Get your Computer Science degree first-- I'm guessing you probably won't have much in the way of AI classes at your community college, I dunno. I had one undergraduate AI class available at my school-- I took it and it wasn't very in depth. You'll probably need graduate level courses somewhere.

At the undergraduate level, learn to program. ESPECIALLY learn to write recursive algorithms. Learn Scheme/LISP (very similar syntax, IIRC). I seem to recall that those languages were big in the AI world, but that may have changed.

Once you've done that, I would guess you want to get into a graduate program somewhere. I'm not sure, but I would expect at that point you could get into learning about neural networks and advanced AI design.

Finally, if you want to be a "scientist", you've got to be top notch. Not many companies will want to have you farfing around with AI just for the sake of research unless:

1) They have a specific task in mind for you (one that you probably won't care much about)
2) You're doing really incredible things

DaveE