At about this time next year ill be in university. Ive decided that im going to persue a career in AI - probably take a masters in ANNs or something. As far as i can tell this career will be in demand in the future and gives me the best shot at a high salary. So what do you guys think - is it worth it or should i change my mind and persue another career? "Free advice is seldom cheap." -- Rule of Acquisition #59

Persue another career, one that you can''t be talked into or out of over an Internet message board.

Any suggustions?

"Free advice is seldom cheap."
-- Rule of Acquisition #59

No, my point was you should choose your career based on something you love to do, not based on the random ramblings of APs.

Oh and definately don''t just do it because you think you will make a lot of money.

But i do love programming, especially natural systems (ie water - check out members.rogers.com/ramrajb/Downloads/IslandDemo.zip - need a fast cpu). When i saw my first ANN (artificial neural net) i went nuts. They are amazing

Idealy i want to go into a career that will maximize my money - pleasure experience. I think this (AI) is it. I just want to know what you guys are going through, that is if you work in the AI industry. How are trends looking, is the future promissing for AI?

I guess what im getting at is which type of AI is worth persuing? There are many specific masters i can get, as from my current perspective ANNs look the best. Further, is AI programming as fun as it sounds? What are your experiences in this fairly young speciality?

I''m doing my master''s degree right now (I''m unofficially focusing on graphics and AI, in case it matters). The first thing I want to say is that you don''t even need to worry about any of this. I really recommend that you just take classes in all the different areas of CS before making a decision like what do get a master''s degree in. By the end of your junior year you should have taken enough classes in varied areas to know what it is that you like the most, and go from there. Making a decision before then is just a waste of time (IMHO). I know, when I started, I wanted to do OS/Systems programming, and here I am now doing graphics and AI... I never would have guess that this is what I''d be doing when I started.

As for jobs after your master''s... you can get paid a good deal of money regardless of what you do your thesis on, so it''s not *that* big of a deal (granted, you can probably make a little more if you work in a job related to your thesis, but i wouldn''t worry too much about that, if i were you - god knows *I''m* not =)

It depends on what school you are going to? You did not mention what university that offers an AI or ANN program. I am doing research into ANNs right now and there is a lot of things that the casual person who is just reading tutorials on ANN doesn''t understand. It takes a _lot_ of mathematics to prove what you do is correct. It contains a lot of elements of statistical analysis. You will hear a lot about classification, quantization, nonlinear regression, etc. So be sure you beef up on the math before heading down this path. It also uses a lot of linear algebra to compactly write out the ANN theory.

AI is very interesting. But contains a lot of different areas of science. You will learn about expert systems (ones that use fuzzy logic, bayes theoreoms, lots of statistics and set theory), evolutionary programming (Genetic algorithms, Genetic programming these are simple to theorize but hard to implement), and of course NN''s. Lots of math that is really advanced. Know what you''re getting into or it will be like a landslide coming down on you. If you are sure of yourself, then go right ahead. you can learn the calculus and the applied statistics in 1 or 2 years of college.

Good Luck.

Im thinking of going to either university of waterloo or university of toronto, both in ontario. In ontario, toronto, windsor, and western are the only ones who offer graduate courses in AI.

I agree with mmelson in that you really shouldn''t be too concerend with you masters if you are not even out of high school yet. Also remember that you dont HAVE to go to the same university for your masters. It sounds like you are already quite experinced with programming so no matter what school you go to you will probably be bored out of your mind because of the simplicity of the undergraduate classes, i know i was and I only knew QBasic before going into the CSC program! So I would suggest you look at the schools undergraduate catalog to find the school with the classes that sound the most interesting to you. Then as a junior or senior you will have a better idea on what you may want to persue in graduate school. Geez most highschoolers go into school with undeclared majors anyways, atleast you know what department to join.