Andy Liu GRADUATE DISTINCTIONS
Andy Liu receives Honorable Mention from NSF GRFP As noted in the previous article, 11 University of Utah graduate students were awarded the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF GRFP) for 2021. Fourteen other U graduate students received an Honorable Mention from the NSF. Andy Liu is one of those who received an Honorable Mention. He is a graduate student in the Department of Mathematics, working on a Ph.D. in mathematical biology. Tell us about your research. “I’m interested in using a branch of machine learning called ‘reinforcement learning’ to better understand the function of biological brains. My goal is to explain why intelligent agents perform tasks that are indirectly
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related to their goals (called auxiliary tasks) and how we can replicate those tasks to improve artificial intelligence performance. “To understand this, look at babies and young children. They play with intense curiosity, challenging themselves and developing an understanding of how the world works. Without any definite goals, they can become adept at physics, language, and even abstract thinking. What drives them? How do they decide what they are interested in or when to give up? “Research in robotics has shown that allowing an artificial intelligence (AI) to play just like a baby— without any goals or desired outcome—helps us develop a much more masterful AI—one that is more robust than one trained on only one task. I believe that programming more general AI with this kind
