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鈥楬ey, Siri, Tell Me 色色影院 the 色色影院 AI Minor鈥
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Whether you realize it or not, your life is full of artificial intelligence (AI).听
It鈥檚 everywhere from the moment you check your phone in the morning (facial recognition) and leave your house (maps with real-time traffic) to getting through the workday (spelling and grammar checks for email and endless Google searches) and finally wrapping up the evening with a nice binge-watch (recommendations for you on your favorite streaming service).听
Kettering students will have considerable AI awareness, an understanding of the complexities of AI, and can become pioneers working with and developing the latest technologies. The University began offering a minor in AI this year.
鈥淥ne of the cool things about AI is it鈥檚 literally everywhere now,鈥 said Dr. Michael Farmer, Computer Science Department Head. 鈥淚t鈥檚 in transportation with autonomous vehicles and speech recognition with Alexa and Google. We take for granted with Siri and Alexa how much AI is behind that and those engines for us to say, 鈥楬ey, Alexa, order me more grapefruits!鈥櫶
鈥淭hat鈥檚 actually a pretty complicated conversation you鈥檙e having with a machine because it will find you a grocery store near you, and what鈥檚 a grapefruit? How many grapefruits does a normal person order so it doesn鈥檛 deliver a dump truck of grapefruits? It鈥檚 all of these things we just assume, and we take for granted, but there鈥檚 a lot of smarts in a simple request that we make.鈥
When it comes to AI, Farmer said most people focus on machine learning because that鈥檚 what is most often covered in the media, but there are four active research areas in AI: search, knowledge representation, reasoning under uncertainty and machine learning.听
The minor features courses in Computer Science and elective options in Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Computer Engineering and Data Analytics, making it one of the University's most interdisciplinary minors.
鈥淲e have many course options in the minor that can pique students鈥 interest,鈥 Farmer said.
The new minor got Mechanical Engineering major Ethan Pereira鈥檚 鈥23 attention.听
鈥淚鈥檝e always been interested in programming and the amazing things that developers are able to do,鈥 he said. 鈥淭he Computer Science courses are a nice break from the math-intensive engineering courses. On top of that, the rapid development of AI in recent years and witnessing all of the incredible things it can do makes it a very exciting field that I want to be a part of.鈥
So far, Pereira鈥檚 favorite course has been Artificial Intelligence (CS-481), but he鈥檚 looking forward to taking Machine Learning and Deep Learning.
He said he enjoyed the open-ended final project, which allowed students to come up with something they would find interesting.
鈥淔or the final project, I decided to make a fuzzy logic elevator controller to control the acceleration of the drive motor to smoothly accelerate and decelerate my elevator as it gets closer to its target destination,鈥 Pereira said. 鈥淭his was a lot of fun because it took ideas I learned from MECH-330 [Dynamic Systems with Vibrations] and applied them to my fuzzy controller. Effectively mixing my major and minor in one assignment.鈥
After graduation, he hopes to work in robotics and earn his Master鈥檚 in Control Systems.听
鈥淚t鈥檚 a very intriguing and exciting field for me, especially with the tools to mix and match my understanding of engineering and AI systems to get optimal control of complex systems,鈥 Pereira said.
He said he doesn鈥檛 see AI overtaking conventional engineering, but it will continue to become more prevalent.
鈥淯ltimately, I think it鈥檚 important to diversify and expand my foundations of knowledge so that I can have different ideas and approaches to the same problem to reach the best solution,鈥 Pereira said. 鈥淎I, to me, is like another form of engineering. It can be used to solve some complex engineering problems, and it doesn鈥檛 hurt to have more tools in the toolbox.鈥
Farmer echoed Pereira鈥檚 thoughts on the growing importance of AI.
鈥淓ven if you鈥檙e not going to be an AI developer, there鈥檚 a certain awareness in AI that you need in order to be an effective engineer in almost anything,鈥 Farmer said. 鈥淚n another five years, you鈥檒l probably need to have an AI understanding for literally anything you need to work on because you鈥檒l run into it somewhere.鈥
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