Mahir Shahriar
200 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10031

2/13/24

Professor Sara Jacobson
City College of New York
160 Convent Ave
New York, NY 10036
Subject: Letter of Introduction

Dear Professor Jacobson,
I am writing to you to share my journey and experiences in the world of engineering and computer science.
My name is Mahir Shahriar, and I am pursuing Computer Science at CCNY. Computer science (CS), especially in recent times, has seen a massive influx of students since the pandemic and the transition into online learning/work. This mainly stems from the abundance of creators on TikTok and other social media platforms advertising how it had a “low” barrier of entry, made extremely high levels of money, and was relatively easy to work remotely from home. All things considered, CS is very compelling, but the reasons listed above are not why I originally chose to pursue it.
Before high school, I was homeschooled. I stayed at home all day and learned nothing but math and ELA from my laptop, utilizing different websites such as Khan Academy and IXL. I had no need to learn anything else, homeschooling only required me to pass the New York State Exams. But all the time spent on that laptop would spark curiosity in me. How did the thing that I was learning everything from even work? What else could it do that I wasn’t aware of? During my free time, of which I had a lot, I spent a lot of it just looking at computers and robots on the internet. I even saw concept materials of Artificial Intelligence (AI), something that I would become almost obsessed with. In my mind, I saw AI as an artificial human, something that didn’t have the same biological body but could think and act in unison with humans.
When I reached high school, my parents made the decision to bring me back to public school, a high school that specialized in engineering and architecture. It was there that I took my first CS class, a beginner class in coding and programming. The first project I had was to make a very crude chatbot, just a simple program that would ask certain questions and understand only a few responses, but it was my first experience creating something through the use of CS. Through this small project, I was able to conjure up so many different possible things that could be made with through coding, I felt as if I had the power of creation.
It was here at this school that I was also introduced to other forms of engineering. Civil, aerospace, and mechanical; they showed it all to us in our freshman year. We had to choose one of these fields that we wanted to take specialized classes for in our later years at the school. I chose aerospace engineering; I was mildly interested in planes and I had a couple of friends who were doing it. While I did learn a lot from those aerospace engineering classes, those two years spent taking those classes were extremely stressful and difficult. The topics were very physics-heavy, covering topics such as Bernoulli’s Principle, aerodynamics, fluid mechanics, and propulsion.
Coming to CCNY, I wanted to go back to my main interest in CS. From the very beginning, I was into AI, and in my senior year of high school, I started getting interested in human psychology. AI is known for its limitations. Most AI models are language models, they just use available data to find the most correct response. However, that never was equipped to deal with information that involved human emotion, biases in information, and general “irregularities” with the human race. My goal in pursuing CS was in hopes of advancing AI to a point where the AI could “feel” and “express” emotion, or as close as physically possible to that. I also wanted to find a way for AI to work around biases. So much of the information we digest has biases and hidden meanings. As humans, we are able to discern these biases and hidden meanings and make our own understanding of these things, but AI in its current state can’t, which just leads to misinformation as many people utilize AI language models such as ChatGPT that fall victim to the biases in information. I want to lead the charge in closing the gap between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence, to allow AI to see the hidden meanings, feelings, and biases presented in information to better help human society.
My journey into engineering and CS was a strange one compared to most that I’ve heard, but I am determined to drive AI into a new age and will stop at nothing to make sure AI is as close to humans to be fully utilized by humans.
Thank you for reading my introduction letter.

Best,

Mahir Shahriar
Computer Science Student at CCNY

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