More details on how you can participate in the Erdos institute

welcome to #artificialintelligence #117

Late last year, I announced a very personal and exciting venture with a social focus called the Erdos institute

My original post resonated with people

https://lnkd.in/e6BhWwk8

where I said

The most important thing to aspire for is the feeling of a true place of learning. In many ways, it's the same I try to do in my teaching i.e. genuinely create an ecosystem of knowledge sharing and make a difference to the community

Let me explain more with a story

In Oxford, there is a well known sandwich shop called Taylors of Oxford - which is round the corner from my campus in the historic St Giles area of Oxford

Once, when I was having lunch there with a colleague, a young couple next to us were discussing animatedly about Schrodinger's cat - and I said to my friend .. welcome to Oxford - traditionally you find couples arguing about a real cat - but here you see a young couple arguing about Schrodinger's cat?as if it were a normal topic of conversation.

But, more to the point, that's exactly the kind of conversation I want to capture at the Erdos institute - and its what most people miss in their day jobs.

It's one of the main advantages of being at Oxford (Cambridge, MIT etc) - especially at Oxford there is the Tutorial system that fosters critical thinking through conversation.

If we want to build on this spirit of intelligent and insightful conversation with the core value of "Democratising AI research" , the question is -

Who does the Erdos Institute serve and how?

Based on the creative spirit of Erdos himself("My brain is open" -?https://lnkd.in/ecGBQRAU)?, we want to encourage more people to embark on collaborative research in Artificial Intelligence.

There are two main groups (within the remit of AI themes which we will select)

a) Students anywhere in the world (typically bachelors or masters) who want to work with the best in AI globally

b) Professionals who want to work on the research side in AI

How would it work?

We propose the below

a) We work in cohorts

b) Each cohort has a team for papers (typically spanning professionals and students)

c) Each team writes and publishes a paper/publication in a relatively short time (3 months)

d) Papers are assisted by GPT based on the methodology we developed at #salooki https://lnkd.in/e427W3qD

e) The papers are published in an omnibus/journal

What are the next steps

a) we start small and prove it

b) If you are interested please sign up on the substack (no cost)

and we will send more soon

https://lnkd.in/e6yxF5rd

c) I expect that this will be a USA based non profit - but global in scope

d) Initial themes are likely to be AI (broadly), AI for Engineering sciences. Responsible AI, Maths for AI, AI in Education, Large language models

we welcome suggestions also

f) we maintain very high standards

Finally, I am please to announce a team of

me, Alexander Ash [MBCS, BSc (Econ)] ????? , Ay?e Mutlu and Aditya Jaokar

I will announce the advisory board soon

I truly hope this will make a difference. Some examples:

a) A woman in New York working as a data scientist could collaborate with a young student in Kenya on a problem related to water management

b) A young student in India who is working on his masters could collaborate with someone in the UK who is a based in Cambridge and teaches AI

c) Over time, a professional in Berlin would publish a series of papers and get a new job based on the knowledge he demonstrates

d) An engineer in China could include a series of papers they publish here in their masters application for the USA

e) A teacher in South east Asia who collaborates with a research assistant in Zurich on a common problem of interest

I also want to create a new format ie not the traditional form of publishing - but rather where we accept GPT/LLMs as an assistant to speed up our work within our domain areas of expertise

comments / ideas welcome

Please sign up here if you want to stay in touch as we launch

https://lnkd.in/e6yxF5rd

image source:

A children's book I had on Erdos

https://lnkd.in/earwGHmy