For my Senior Project, I decided to expand my knowledge on the place of Artificial Intelligence (abbreviated as “AI”) in the modern world, and to gain the experience of designing and training my own AI. Both my paper topic and project have changed drastically from my original proposal, but I remained true to my original intentions. My paper demonstrates how AI is already being used to enhance humanity, and argues for its continued development, and my project involved training my own AI to seek out a food source and evolve on its own.
When I started brainstorming ideas for my project, I produced many, most of which did not pan out. By the time I got to my first hour of work, I had the intention of creating a complex simulation involving multiple AIs running alongside one another, interacting, and helping each other to survive. After about eight hours of just learning Unity (the game development application), I came to the realization that I did not have enough previous experience to jump into an extremely advanced project like what I had intended. I figured that I could just watch some tutorials, look at some examples, and throw something together. I underestimated the complexity of the project, and I overestimated my ability to learn on the fly.
My mentor, Mr. Weaver, found a tutorial in which I would have to program a hummingbird to seek out flowers and collect nectar. I successfully completed most of the tutorial in about nine hours. I did not complete the tutorial the first time because my PC died. I lost all my progress, and I had no backups. By this point, I had lost all hope in completing my project in time.
A week later, I set up an Apple Mac Mini, and installed the most compatible version of Unity, which was about three years newer than the version that the Hummingbird tutorial was built on. This meant that I would have to modify parts of the tutorial as I redid it. This wasn’t too challenging, as someone on the Unity forums had already solved most of the problems. There were a few smaller issues that I had to solve entirely by myself, but I still managed to complete the entire tutorial in only thirteen hours, including the training of the AI.
After completing the tutorial, I talked to Mrs. Holder and Mr. Weaver. I was given the idea to just use the tutorial as my project, since I learned a lot from it, it loosely fit my original idea, and I only had about one month left at the time.
One of the hardest parts of this entire process was the beginning. It took until October 4th for me to even complete my Letter of Intent, and even then, I wasn’t ready to properly begin.
Since my project changed so much in the beginning, I was unable to find a mentor that would agree to help me, or even be able to. Finally, I was introduced to Mr. Weaver, who kindly agreed to learn Unity alongside me and help me in whatever ways he could. I am extremely grateful for his generosity, as I would certainly be in a much worse situation without his help.
One of my proudest moments of this entire project was when I dragged the configuration file containing my AI into Unity and pressed play. Seeing it spring to life was so rewarding, and I felt so much relief. In a matter of only a few weeks, I had gone from having nothing to having an almost complete project. I had overcome my own doubt and finished something without a due date hanging over my head.
Throughout it all, Mrs. Holder and Mr. Weaver had my back. Mrs. Holder would sit with me during my free periods and guide me in my research and encourage me to continue. Mr. Weaver kept me accountable as I had to continue to progress on my project in between meetings. I could not have done it without their help.
From Mrs. Holder’s help with the paper, I learned a lot about how I project my thoughts, and how to guide them in a more useful direction. My paper started out as an incoherent mess of my opinions, thoughts, and research. I had written it like I would write an essay for an AP exam, quickly and without much care for detailed scrutiny. I was not in a pinch, I was not in a rush, but I was writing like I was.
Taking the time to sit with the paper, go over it section by section, sentence by sentence, and word by word really helped me focus it into something that made sense outside of my own head. Even with all the time spent on it, I was still finished a few weeks early.
After this entire school year, I can’t help but hope that this experience will aid me in my future endeavors. If I could go back in time and give myself advice, I would ask myself to really think about my own abilities and whether I had the motivation or energy to spend countless hours researching and learning. If I had just thought about it for longer, I could have saved myself a lot of unnecessary stress. Considering I feel like I’ve lost a few years from my life from the stress, I would say that the trip back in time would be worth it.
Overall, I had fun. I had a lot of low points, but I also had a lot of high points. I wrote the longest paper that I had ever written, I coded an AI with my own hands, I completed a project (mostly) on time, and I didn’t implode on myself and give up. I would call that a success.