A warm hello to all fellow Singularitarians!
Simon Mezgec from Slovenia here (don’t worry if you can’t find it on the map). 
I’ve been fascinated by technology all my life and so I chose computer science as my career choice. More specifically, during my initial study years, I started gravitating towards computer vision, and for my Bachelor’s thesis, I developed a traffic sign detection system (mind you, this was in 2011, so before this kind of thing was present in basically every new car). 
I then transitioned slowly towards using computer vision for solving medical and health-related issues, and so for my Master’s thesis, I developed a system that transforms cancer delineations between MR and CT images, with the idea that MR images differentiate soft tissue better, but MRI machines are more expensive and not as ubiquitous as CT machines. This means that, using such a system, you can ideally take an MR image in the beginning phase of the treatment, and then you can get by using just CT images.
For my Ph.D., I started developing systems for recognizing as many different food and drink types from images as possible. This is useful not only for regular people who want to keep a tab on their calorie intake, but especially for patients who have different restrictions regarding their diet. After my first year, all other computer vision approaches began to take a backseat to deep learning - it was such a revolution in this field, that you basically can’t develop a competitive algorithm for computer vision without using some form of deep learning anymore. So naturally, I then started using it myself, and I have been researching deep learning approaches ever since. It really is mind-boggling how much my (and, presumably, almost every other researcher’s) work was changed by deep learning - where before I was coding most of the time, I am now designing AI models, preparing data (which is an enormous problem in and of itself) and trying to figure out how I can design AI models better by looking at their performance. So quite different, but a whole lot of fun!
I’m now in my final year, and I have published a couple of papers so far, so if anyone wants to give them a read (shameless self-promotion incoming):
I have only become seriously interested in blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies at the end of last year, but I am now very excited about the prospect of such disruptive technologies. And when I found out about SingularityNET, it really piqued my interest, as it is not only a marriage of blockchain and the field that I am working in, but seems to address a lot of very important concerns about society in the coming years and decades. Namely, concerns about the centralization of power in the age of AI, as AI will make any imbalances in power today that much more obvious in the future. Not to mention that the team behind SNET looks very capable and has a clear goal in mind. I can’t wait for the launch of the beta and final versions of the platform, when I will try integrating my deep learning models onto the SNET platform.
So here we are. I’m very excited to be part of this community, and particularly excited about where this project is heading! Hopefully someone will find this at least a bit interesting, and if you have any kind of question (regarding deep learning, AI or otherwise), please don’t hesitate to fire away - I’ll answer to the best of my abilities.
it is great to have you here.
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