Camping with AI
Learn without a machine
Before I went to camp in Big Sur this week, I came up with an interesting idea: What if I brought all the difficult papers and books to read there?
I often think I cannot learn a lot of things because I think I’m not smart enough or don’t have enough background knowledge to do it. But my algorithm and data structure professor proved me wrong, and my high-level math professor did it too. Hence, I wonder if is it really because they are too hard to understand or if it’s just because I haven’t put my heart inside.
In a civil lifestyle, if I find a book hard to learn, I can go work on something else. And I’m encouraged to give up because of all the distractions present in my life. But if I’m in an environment where I have no other choice (no phone, no internet, no hangout with friends), will I be able to do it? And reading AI papers during a camping trip seems to be a romantic and pretentious idea anyway. So I’m for sure going to give it a try.
I bought two NeurIPS award papers on AI, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering by Richard Hamming, Invention and Innovation by Vaclav Smil, and The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen.
And then, the reality is so much less romantic than I thought, because I was super busy surviving. In the night, it was freezing cold with rain penentrating over our tent. We needed to wake up in the middle of the night to move away tent from the rain pond in the dark, thinking if we should go home tmr. The moment I had some spare time, my brain was too tired to digest anything…
Well…less romantic than I imagine but still inspirational. I was able to finish the two AI papers and even understand most of the math. I also find connections between The Art of Doing Science and Engineering and the AI papers. I was like: am I this smart???
Look at me.
I read in the tent with tiny bugs, learn in front of the ocean, take notes inside the car, and even concentrate in front of the campfire with my headlamp (?)
Hey hey, weirdo friends. I know you are thinking that, wow you are such a nerd! No! I met the biggest rainbow in my life, meditated in the sounds of waves, watched a sky of constellations, and said hi to banana slugs eating grass.
I learn about my potential to learn on this camping trip. Most of the time, I don't want to read the math section in the paper just because I lack patience. I easily find a book boring because I want to feel stimulated as quickly as I can. However, when I wasn't given a choice, especially in the cold tent where you don't really want to do anything else, I cultivated the patience to digest, took the time to read the same section again and again, and freed my mind from other daily worries that distract me. And then, bam, a miracle happens; I become smarter! (aka deeper learning happens)
This is my story about learning AI without a machine hehe. I learn more deep learning when I am able to learn deeper without a choice. (sorry about my dad's joke)