Question prompted by Electric City Hacks application
Why I am proud of it, the obstacles I had to overcome, learning points, where I see the project going in the future…
There are two definitions of the word student.
- “denoting someone who is studying in order to enter a particular profession”.
- “a person who takes an interest in a particular subject”
Our industrialized education system is built to optimize only 1 of these definitions (hint: it’s the first one).
I’ve always hated that. Why can’t I be a student by the second definition?! I want to explore my interest, and have multiple interests, and let those interests guide my education.
After a lot of deliberating, I’ve finally started working on a project. I want to make an AI that helps users explore and discover their interests, teaching users about topics they have interest in. It’s the project I’m most proud of because it’s the project I feel is the most important, the freedom of education.
The project has two iterations so far, the second building on the difficulties of the previous. The most recent prototype has simple chat + graph interfaces that effectively show minimum viability that the project can work.
There is a lot to be done on the knowledge graph backend and the usability/design of the front end — all of which I have yet to learn. The next iteration will work towards creating a knowledge graph with the information and relations necessary to fuel the AI.
The scope of this project is truly enormous, and I doubt I’ll be able to turn it into a fully fledged product anytime soon. But I’m still immensely proud that I’m taking it on and learning as much as I can. I’m stunned at my own motivation to learn — which is proof that the second definition listed above deserves more attention paid towards it.
