“嘿，Siri，跟我说说…… 正规的赌博appAI辅修

你是否意识到 it or not, your life is full of artificial intelligence (AI). 

It’s 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). 

Kettering students will have considerable AI awareness, 对人工智能复杂性的理解, and can become pioneers working with and developing the latest technologies. The University began offering a minor in AI this year.

“One of the cool things about AI is it’s literally everywhere now,” said Dr. Michael Farmer, Computer Science Department Head. “It’s in transportation with autonomous vehicles and speech recognition with 亚莉克莎 and Google. We take for granted with Siri and 亚莉克莎 how much AI is behind that and those engines for us to say, ‘嘿, 亚莉克莎, 给我多订些葡萄柚!’ 

“That’s actually a pretty complicated conversation you’re having with a machine because it will find you a grocery store near you, 柚子是什么? How many grapefruits does a normal person order so it doesn’t deliver a dump truck of grapefruits? 这些都是我们假设的, 我们认为这是理所当然的, but there’s a lot of smarts in a simple request that we make.”

说到人工智能, Farmer said most people focus on machine learning because that’s what is most often covered in the media, but there are four active research areas in AI: search, 知识表示, 不确定性推理和机器学习. 

The minor features courses in Computer Science and elective options in Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, “计算机工程与数据分析”, making it one of the University's most interdisciplinary minors.

“We have many course options in the minor that can pique students’ interest,农夫说.

The new minor got Mechanical Engineering major Ethan Pereira’s ’23 attention. 

“I’ve always been interested in programming and the amazing things that developers are able to do,他说. “The Computer Science courses are a nice break from the math-intensive engineering courses. 最重要的是, 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.”

到目前为止, Pereira’s favorite course has been 人工智能 (CS-481), but he’s looking forward to taking Machine Learning and Deep Learning.

他说他喜欢这个开放式的期末项目, which allowed students to come up with something they would find interesting.

“为了最后的项目, 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,佩雷拉说. “This 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.”

After graduation, he hopes to work in robotics and earn his Master’s in Control Systems. 

“It’s 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,佩雷拉说.

He said he doesn’t see AI overtaking conventional engineering, 但它将继续变得更加普遍.

“最终, I think it’s 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,佩雷拉说. “对我来说，人工智能就像是另一种形式的工程. It can be used to solve some complex engineering problems, and it doesn’t hurt to have more tools in the toolbox.”

Farmer echoed Pereira’s thoughts on the growing importance of AI.

“即使你不打算成为一名人工智能开发者, there’s a certain awareness in AI that you need in order to be an effective engineer in almost anything,农夫说. “再过五年, you’ll probably need to have an AI understanding for literally anything you need to work on because you’ll run into it somewhere.”