In my blog posts about employment I have made the point that computers are getting better and better at carrying out tasks that previously required humans. The strongest case in point here are Google’s self driving cars. As recently as 2004, the year of the first DARPA Grand Challenge, it looked like a driverless car was a long, long way off. We seem to have hit a major acceleration point in what can be accomplished at the intersection of large and real time data sets, massive compute power and better algorithms.

While I have kept up fairly well with what has happened with the various parts of the typical compute stack, my knowledge of machine learning and artificial intelligence is woefully outdated. So my personal learning agenda for 2013 is to come up to speed in this area as I suspect that it will be at the heart of some exciting investment opportunities in the years to come.

I am still putting together a list of what the specific areas are that I am trying to understand better but I have started by picking up a copy of Peter Norvig’s AI: A Modern Approach. I am also considering taking a class or two. If anyone has put together a recent reading list or other suggestions for must see lectures please send them my way.