Who am I? A person of the world.

This web site is here as a way of expressing myself and becoming part of the wider world. I would like to use this web site as an outlet for my thoughts and any creative inclinations that I may get.

For as long as I can remember I have been a Star Trek fan. I was fascinated about this future vision of humanity and part of me has always wanted to see us pull together and work as a unified species.

After overcoming many obstacles in my life, I have finally found myself in a position to voice my opinions and work towards a future that I would like to see. I am a PhD student at the University of Strathclyde where I research Artificial Intelligence (AI) using Video Games. Someone has to make a Commander Data one day!

On a more serious note, my work focuses on developing techniques for creating AI which can solve problems for which they were not explicitly designed to solve.

When we develop AI today, we design it to solve a single problem. Chess, Go, Cleaning a room. These are all single problems, and we can invest our own knowledge of the subject into the AI in order to assist in creating a good solution. My feeling is that it would be so much cooler if an AI could figure out how to tackle a problem without any input from a user at all!

Using Video Games, and an online framework available at GVGAI, I have been able to develop an AI which can play (theoretically!) any video game. Unfortunately it still doesn't perform very well at certain games, and this is where my continued research is focused.

Disclaimer!

When I began putting together this web site I had a grand vision of a highly professional web site which would demonstrate my best side. Parts of that will certainly be true, but I feel that it is more important to have this space for myself also. After some thought I decided that instead of professionalism, I want to bring my passion here, for that is what drives me to where I am going. I am who I am, I don't always like the dishonest nature of professionalism and wish to be true to myself, so there may be jokes and musings here that you may not find on other professional web sites. Apologies in advance!