Hi I am Azim from Iran. I heldbachelor in software computer engineering and now I strongly would to continue AI in graduate studies. There are some important questions for me in order to be successful in AI. For example, what are the most important self-prerequisities for a student who wants to be accomplished in this field. In other words, what should I do before starting. Also I need to know how much are important some certifications like MCTS or etc? Is there a certification usefull or effective for AI? [Edited by - aar1983 on October 16, 2009 11:25:00 AM]

Certifications or bachelors don't mean much when you go into industry. They don't hurt, but you'll be evaluated on what you did in your spare time or what you worked on based on your own initiatives.

A personal drive and a sense of what's important to work on is the most important.


If you want to get a sense of what's important, read through all the articles at AiGameDev.com -- that's probably a good place to start!

And always name message board threads with gratuitously more vowels than necessary. People in the industry find that a badge of maturity and great wisdom. You will rise fast and far. In fact, the perception of your ability it is somewhat proportional to the number of extraneous characters you use. Develop an algorithm to determine the maximum number of characters allowed in a field, and extend one or more vowels to fill the available space. Present that as a demo and you will be worshiped.

Lol, from my experience, people with English as a second language don't really register sarcasm :)

Anyway, it really depends on what you want to do. If you're looking to become an AI programmer in the games industry, there's probably less topics that you need to know. I'm not saying it's easier, far from it, but there's little academic AI that's useful in game development.

If you'd like to be an AI researcher, there's a LOT more scope in that area. Fuzzy logic, finite state machines, neural networks, genetic algorithms, Bayesian networks, scheduling algorithms, software agents, just to name a few.

I should point out that I'm no expert and all of the information I've just said is pretty much available by spending an hour or two on Google (hint hint) :)