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Understanding how AI works: the human intelligence enterprise
AI resources from MIT’s late Patrick Winston and his seminal course
Do you want to understand how AI works?
This was a rhetorical question.
If you are planning to remain relevant as AI transformation takes place over the next decade, you have to.
Human Intelligence Enterprise was a course taught by the late Professor Patrick Henry Winston at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Although offered as an undergraduate course, it made many doctoral students bend their knees.
After being transferred to MIT Open Courseware, this top-rated and hard-to-get-in course became available to the public for free.
Well, you don’t need to “take” the course, as now all the material is out there on the internet, but regardless, understanding the spirit of the course helps — in that regard:
Should you “take” it?
In his course introduction page, Patrick told why you should NOT take the course, and the first item reads as:
“You want a subject that will help you get a summer job. (Take a subject in machine learning instead. This course focuses on cognition and what makes humans special. It is not about popular statistical mechanisms.).”
Should you read this article?
I’ll follow his spirit and suggest this: similarly, do not read this article if you are looking for quick tips for quick wins in your choice of AI-powered tools, such as Midjourney or ChatGPT.
Read it if you want to take the path less frequently taken, the steeper path, that usually rewards the taker at the end:
This article will suggest a growth path and share critical resources about AI to build a knowledge base.
Read and used as intended, this article will help you become immune to the fear of missing…
