A Word About My Newsletter's Title

“The Hidden Layer” is the title of my newsletter, if you haven’t noticed. I’m Brandon, an aspiring technology student based in Atlanta, Georgia. I didn’t even try to say “cyber” student or “AI engineering” student to describe myself, because I’m just not sure anymore.

Recently, I’ve been talking about app development, as it had been my “mini” dream to create an AP Stat educational app when I get a 5 on my AP Stat exam my freshman year.

Yes, my freshman year. My school system is a bit silly.

However, app development is not really what I’m aiming for as a career, albeit it’s still technology-related. Logically, I should really just talk about something else, right?

I decided that I would.

I want to reflect on and explain why I named my newsletter the way I did. Some background info: “hidden layers” in an AI models, specifically neural networks (ANNs), are the part of the model that spans the gap between the input data and the output data, where all of the “pattern-recognition” and “weighting” happens. That is to say, the “hidden layer” within a neural network is there most of the “thinking” happens. So whatever I do with my newsletter now, whether I stay in a certain sector of technology or not, I’ll always do my best to explain my findings (as much as time allows).

In short, I created this newsletter so that I can share what I learn about technology with others every week or so, so that they can learn from my experiences if they’d like.

Now, I already know that I’ve switched topics before: I switched from talking about machine learning and AI to talking about app development (without AI), and it was because I wanted to pursue that freshman dream. But now with all the pressure of junior year on me right now, I’ve decided to switch topics again to something that I’m currently working on to be more productive without having to bend over backwards with my time to keep up with yet another “side passion”.

That is to say, I’ll be talking about my learning journey in my Science Fair project now, as it’s a requirement to participate in it for my junior class pathway. Fortunately, AI and CV (computer vision) is going to be a large part of my team’s project, so I’ll share what I discover along the way, and maybe show how the concepts I explored before find their way back into this project.