I am addressing this to starters and professionals in machine learning and artificial intelligence. It is part of a talk I plan to do at the University of Texas in Dallas next month.

The letters “A” and “I” are ubiquitous these days with the words “Artificial Intelligence.” But I want to change that for a minute and turn AI into “A person that is I.” “I” am the human with a biological brain, the intellect with emotions, the one who cares, the selfless person, the one that errors, laughs, jumps, cries, fights, learns… the human being. Let’s take the word AI and describe it from the perspective of ourselves - “A person that is I.” We may remember ourselves again instead of continuously looking outward toward artificial intelligence. If AI hype is about artificial intelligence, why cannot we think more of AI for things that matter to us, the human beings, the I?

While we all get excited about technologies like machine learning, deep learning, reinforcement learning, and Auto ML, we must ask ourselves: how can we use the technology to benefit our Is – the humans? What is the human problem that you want to solve with AI? What can you do with your learning to help improve the society around you? Yes, learning a lot of “A” technologies is cool, but, at some point, you won’t be able to catch up with every article on ArXiv, the latest code repos on GitHub, the newest conference proceedings, and the computer you need. The breakthroughs in artificial intelligence are happening fast and are overwhelming sometimes. You may reach a point of disturbance because you won’t be able to catch up. Don’t push hard to catch up.

We should spend more time on the “I” (the humans) instead of “A,” the artificial machine. We should look at the human problems surrounding us daily and find the machine learning tool that helps us solve them - the “I” in “AI.”