From Humble Beginnings to Next Steps: AI

I come from a humble place. My grandfather lived his last days in Mexico in a concrete home with no proper electricity or roof, and it broke my heart. My mom cleans buildings until the wee hours of the morning (1 am) with her confidant, my father, routinely picking her up from work, then starting his 6 am day immersed in his carpentry work…treading along, worrying about making ends meet.

It’s not everyday I open up in this way and in this medium; then I wonder: Are there others like me experiencing their own life challenges and marveling how they ended up where they are?

From San Antonio, Texas by way of Mexico to San Francisco, California, I am on a 2-year software engineering track at Holberton School, and just the other day, I couldn’t help but admire Fanya Montalvo’s role and contribution to Artificial Intelligence (AI).

What is Artificial Intelligence (AI) you may ask? For starters, according to John McCarthy, co-founder of the field and the person who coined the term in 1955, AI is:

the science and engineering of making intelligent machines.

This intelligence exhibited by machines or software has branched further to new subfields like Machine Learning, a type of artificial intelligence that provides computers with the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed.

Amazing, right?!

So here we are, February 11, 2016 — #WomeninSTEM day! — and what better way to highlight Fanya Montalvo’s contribution to the field of Artificial Intelligence then by showcasing her passion and spirit.

Born in Monterrey, Mexico in 1947 and raised in Chicago at the age of 6, Fanya went on to major in physics at Loyola University in Chicago, only to then switch majors to mathematical psychology (being the only female in physics played a role). Soon thereafter, Fanya explored AI, specifically, investigating brain function and designing computer programs to act like brain functions.

This was only the beginning, though. Involved in affective computing or the ability for machines to simulate empathy and generate a response to human emotion, Montalvo is also known to have coined the term AI-complete; in the field of artificial intelligence, AI-complete refers to the most difficult computational problem, equivalent to that of making computers as intelligent to people (something not so easily solved by an algorithm).

I feel like I’m on the cutting edge of science. Building intelligent machines is the next step in computer science.

Yes, a tidbit of Montalvo’s work but nonetheless influential in that I see myself in her, and perhaps others will too. Despite life’s setbacks — being placed in remedial classes at a young age due to her limited English even though she was quite bright, for example, Montalvo continued onward, pursuing her passion and making strides in her line of work.

I raise my glass to Montalvo and other #WomeninSTEM.