I started my career as an engineer in artificial intelligence(AI) and data science over 35 years ago at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. Many of my friends were specialists in AI or Robotics. But, the job opportunities for us were quite limited back then. I ended up changing my career path working at AT&T Bell Laboratories developing software for digital communication, operation support systems, personal messaging and mobile computing. After moving around the world working on all kinds of digital systems, I was back to square one at the retirement age and joining the rest of youngers in AI rush again.
I have been a career and life coach for decades. I thought that it would be very easy to coach myself to refire and restart my 3rd life as an elderly professional all over again. Surprisingly, after searching through internet and senior communities, most of the discussion and services are around financial investment, health care, travelling or life long learning for senior citizen. Since I was a global project manager and learning consultant, I want to startup the 3rd part of my professional life and feel relevant with significant contribution to the society.
Recently, I learned about the power of intention by 1) having a clear purpose of new life and 2) taking actions positively working toward the goals without worrying about how to achieve them in details. It triggered my memory of a decade ago that I published an invention disclosure about “Machine Reading” based on my own methods and practices as a speed reader for decades. Since I was no longer a software developer nor data scientist; I was not aware of the advancement of AI, natural language processing (NLP) or machine learning. Hence I was not able to determine the novelty of my invention against other granted patents in the market. Since my invention was not align to the strategic direction of my company, my corporate patent attorney suggested me to publish my invention disclosure instead of filing for a patent.
Today, AI, machine learning and NLP can do more than what I knew years ago. There are many cloud platforms provide AI and text processing capabilities and services to achieve more complicated tasks intelligently. Now, the top wish in my bucket list is to create my digital twin to help me read and write articles or books effortlessly so that my legacy may survive long after me.
Recently, I read an article about “Guide to Reading Academic Research Papers”. The recommended approach was quite similar to my Machine Reading method and it inspired me to search for solutions that can help create my digital twin again.
Here are my steps of speed reading process flow that may help improve the machine understanding and comprehension of the subject matters by applying latest AI techniques.
- Study the cover, title, subtitle, authors and their affiliations.
- Summarize the sections of Abstract, Preface, Forward or Epilogue for an overview of the purpose the publication.
- Find out from Introduction and background sections about the context of the writing.
- Skim the table of contents, chapters and sections including figures and key concepts to capture the architecture and overall layout of the contents.
- Identify the approaches and methods that describe how the studies were set up, any instruments used, process and workflow.
- Follow through the discussion threads and results given by the authors about the sources of information, finding and conclusion.
- Make the first pass through the entire contents and take notes or mind maps to record what have learned and to get acquainted with the contents especially through figures and graphs.
- Start the second pass through out the entire contents. Focus on shoring up what did not understand and gaining a command of the methods and finally being a critical reader to the contents.
- Collect references and appendix for related information, or extra items of interests.
- Generate a report about this machine reading outcome.
To validate the above machine reading process flow, I may need to use it to conduct a systematic literature review about the research papers in machine reading.
Reference:
[1] Guide to Reading Academic Research Papers, https://towardsdatascience.com/guide-to-reading-academic-research-papers-c69c21619de6
