One thing I didn’t see you mention is neuroscience. My understanding is that some AGI researchers are currently taking this route; e.g. Shane Legg, mentioned in another comment, is an AGI researcher who is currently studying theoretical neuroscience with Peter Dayan. Demis Hassabis is another person interested in AGI who’s taking the neuroscience route (see his talk on this subject from the most recent Singularity Summit). I’m personally interested in FAI, and I suspect that we need to study the brain to understand in more detail the nature of human preference. In terms of a career path, it’s possible I’ll go to graduate school at some point in the future, but my current plans are to just get a programming job and study neuroscience in my free time.
Have you given a thought to just taking the day job route? There are some problems, as I’ve found more than a few journal articles locked behind a paywall, but there are some ways for dealing with this. Furthermore, I’ve found a surprising number of recent neuro articles are available through open access journals like PNAS, Frontiers and through other routes (Google, Google Scholar, CiteseerX, author websites). If you’re interested more in CS research, then I suspect you’ll have even less trouble; for some reason recent (CS papers) seem to almost always be available over the internet.
As far as neuroscience goes, yes I have strongly considered it. I think that I would like to do a program in computational neuroscience. The joint program at U Pitt and Carnegie Mellon looks interesting for this sort of thing, of course MIT and Caltech both have solid programs but I am not confident that my record is strong enough to get into either of those schools.
The day job route makes me somewhat nervous because:
(a) I’m not sure how difficult it is to get published without the right background/support (b) I’m worried that I’ll be isolated from other researchers who might have insight I could benefit from
One thing I didn’t see you mention is neuroscience. My understanding is that some AGI researchers are currently taking this route; e.g. Shane Legg, mentioned in another comment, is an AGI researcher who is currently studying theoretical neuroscience with Peter Dayan. Demis Hassabis is another person interested in AGI who’s taking the neuroscience route (see his talk on this subject from the most recent Singularity Summit). I’m personally interested in FAI, and I suspect that we need to study the brain to understand in more detail the nature of human preference. In terms of a career path, it’s possible I’ll go to graduate school at some point in the future, but my current plans are to just get a programming job and study neuroscience in my free time.
Have you given a thought to just taking the day job route? There are some problems, as I’ve found more than a few journal articles locked behind a paywall, but there are some ways for dealing with this. Furthermore, I’ve found a surprising number of recent neuro articles are available through open access journals like PNAS, Frontiers and through other routes (Google, Google Scholar, CiteseerX, author websites). If you’re interested more in CS research, then I suspect you’ll have even less trouble; for some reason recent (CS papers) seem to almost always be available over the internet.
As far as neuroscience goes, yes I have strongly considered it. I think that I would like to do a program in computational neuroscience. The joint program at U Pitt and Carnegie Mellon looks interesting for this sort of thing, of course MIT and Caltech both have solid programs but I am not confident that my record is strong enough to get into either of those schools.
The day job route makes me somewhat nervous because: (a) I’m not sure how difficult it is to get published without the right background/support (b) I’m worried that I’ll be isolated from other researchers who might have insight I could benefit from