Hello from Jake

My name is Jake Beal, and I'm a 5th year grad student at MIT. Despite being mostly an AI researcher, this is my first time at AAAI, and like many of the other blogger, I'm coming to the Doctoral Consortium. My thesis supervisor is Gerry Sussman, and the AI half of my work is looking at how learning and reasoning can take place as a byproduct of translating between different perspectives. The other half of my work is amorphous computing, where I develop algorithms that let zillions of weak, unreliable devices to work together and achieve programmed goals --- much as the cells in your body collaborate to build and repair things like hands and eyes. I've also dabbled in a number of other areas that my research has collided with, from game theory to networking to ecology. Now that I'm coming up on the end of my program, however, I'm forcing myself to buckle down and focus on my thesis.