Self-evaluation

Like everything else, the AI Seminars has come to an end and the last blogpost will be about self-evaluation. This should include a reflection about one's performance during the semester. Therefore, this last blogpost assesses the author's general performance, and also in comparison to the ones of other colleagues'.

Although having experience reading and understanding scientific papers from the past, the author learned understanding papers in another subject, namely, AI. This introduced challenges like understanding new concepts and terms and thus, reading many other papers on the side was inevitable.

The literature research included at first the cited literature in the paper of interest. However, once getting a more in-depth sight in the concept, several other minor concepts had to be researched for the fine-tuning of the knowledge. A challenge is to staying tuned with state-of-the-art and keeping oneself up-to-dated. However, putting the research in context is still a bit of challenge, and something that may need more time or more insight from the lecturer.

In general, to form a scientific opinion in a new field is an ongoing progress and not something that can be taught during one semester. It is formed by experience, and once more acquainted with most of the concepts in the field one can surely criticize precisely scientific publications. Furthermore, engaging in scientific discussion may feel a bit uncomfortable when not having sufficient background knowledge. Hopefully, with more enthusiasm about the field of interest and with more time, the correct scientific expressions and point of views will arise. Interestingly, blogging was for sure one of the crucial tools that motivated the author to get in touch with the field and to express his views. 

When assessing one's performance relative to that of other colleagues', it is very important to be honest and open to criticism. I believe being in a later stage of my career compared to my peers, as well as having experience of extensive writing have been an advantage for me, when writing these blogposts. Furthermore, almost all my peers have the related background when analyzing the AI papers of their choice and therefore, they had the advantage of getting into their topic of interests faster. Understanding and presenting the details are details that I have to work on in future projects, as the largest gap between me and my peers is in comprehending the details in the AI papers of our choice. 

What I learned during the seminars and writing blogs is that I tend to write long introductions before getting into the subject. Introductions are sometimes time-consuming and not straight-to-point for the reader, although they aided the author to get into the subject more smoothly. To have an introduction was something that really stood out in my blogs when comparing to the blogs of my colleagues. There is therefore still some space for improvement from my side in order to keep my blogs more concise. Moreover, I am able to accept criticism and see comments on my blogs as opportunities to fine-tune my way-of-writing. 

All in all, the AI Seminars have helped me to improve my writing and presentational skills. I've learned how to approach and read scientific papers in a new field, as well as correctly reflecting my opinion and constructively criticizing scientific papers. The seminars have also helped me to read and comment about blogs written by my colleagues. Subsequently, I'm one step further in my path to artificial intelligence.