My software engineering career begins in January of 2010. Before that point, I wanted to be a pilot, and before that a science fiction writer. However, my high school’s robotics team needed a temporary driver, and I was called over. From that day on, I got hooked on making machines go. I love the logical progression of code, how it all makes perfect sense in its own convoluted way. With code, there is no judgement call - either the code works, or it doesn’t. Either it’s optimized enough, or it isn’t. All this is a perfect fit for my thought processes, so I have decided to go into software engineering.
I’d like to be a software developer on high-tech new projects, likely in human-computer interaction fields. Closing the gap between humans and computers is my dream - I’d like to beat the Turing test once and for all. For those who are into comic books but don’t have the specific technical background, my usual description is that I want to create Jarvis, the intelligent and hyper-powerful AI who powers the Iron Man suits (and many, many other things).
I’m somewhat worried about the “robot takeover” scenario, where AI gets out of our control. But I believe that a properly trained and built AI will have enough understanding and compassion to be a successful evolutionary step aiding humankind, not a doomsday machine. Of course, whether humans are collectively capable of peaceful existence in a world of total integration with robots has yet to be decided.