AI or med?

I am in S5 due to sit my higher in a few months. I do higher biology, maths, chemistry, French and English. In S2 I somehow found out about dentistry as a career and did some research but then forgot about it until S3. That's when I decided I wanted to do medicine.

Ive done volunteering, work experience and everything else for med/dent.

However, I have been looking into degrees like AI, international relations etc. I find these very interesting. One problem... im not sure how to prepare a university application for an AI degree. I have no idea how to code and no real idea on what AI is.

Although I know the inside and out of med/dent application I don't want to end up trapped studying something when I can see myself doing something else. I am still very passionate about medicine and love learning about the human body and helping others but the training looks long.

I need to decide what I want to do by October so yeah. Either way I will be needing AAAAA in higher so I will focus on studying for these few months.

Any advice would be appreciated (especially on career prospects in AI). Thank you!

Reply 1

TSR Hippocrates

Hey there, thanks for posting a question in the Medicine forum. :biggrin:

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Reply 2

stilllearning123

Original post

by Melissa200

I am in S5 due to sit my higher in a few months. I do higher biology, maths, chemistry, French and English. In S2 I somehow found out about dentistry as a career and did some research but then forgot about it until S3. That's when I decided I wanted to do medicine.
Ive done volunteering, work experience and everything else for med/dent.
However, I have been looking into degrees like AI, international relations etc. I find these very interesting. One problem... im not sure how to prepare a university application for an AI degree. I have no idea how to code and no real idea on what AI is.
Although I know the inside and out of med/dent application I don't want to end up trapped studying something when I can see myself doing something else. I am still very passionate about medicine and love learning about the human body and helping others but the training looks long.
I need to decide what I want to do by October so yeah. Either way I will be needing AAAAA in higher so I will focus on studying for these few months.
Any advice would be appreciated (especially on career prospects in AI). Thank you!

Don't know if you can get into AI without computer science, so definitely look on the UCAS or uni website for the requirements for the course.

What I would say is that if you aren't fully committed to medicine, if you aren't ready for the life of work it will be, it is not the career for you.
Medicine has the 5/6 years of med school, then the foundation years, then the training years to specialise, which include studying for extra tests, while you work long hours as a resident (junior) doctor. I'm sure you know this already, just reiterating if you aren't willing to put in the work. Obviously you will also have to give up the majority of your summer to study for the UCAT, so just another tough addition to the length.

Career prospects are good right now, I don't know how they will progress down the line as it is basically the new computer science, and computer science has literally no jobs for graduates at all.

It seems that you seem much more interested in AI rather than medicine so that will carry you pretty far.

Best of luck in whatever you decide to do!

Reply 3

DSYJ

Original post

by Melissa200

I am in S5 due to sit my higher in a few months. I do higher biology, maths, chemistry, French and English. In S2 I somehow found out about dentistry as a career and did some research but then forgot about it until S3. That's when I decided I wanted to do medicine.
Ive done volunteering, work experience and everything else for med/dent.
However, I have been looking into degrees like AI, international relations etc. I find these very interesting. One problem... im not sure how to prepare a university application for an AI degree. I have no idea how to code and no real idea on what AI is.
Although I know the inside and out of med/dent application I don't want to end up trapped studying something when I can see myself doing something else. I am still very passionate about medicine and love learning about the human body and helping others but the training looks long.
I need to decide what I want to do by October so yeah. Either way I will be needing AAAAA in higher so I will focus on studying for these few months.
Any advice would be appreciated (especially on career prospects in AI). Thank you!

Work in AI as a founder and previously in a product/investment capacity, my advice is not to necessarily study "AI" (usually postgraduate level courses have those terms). Currently, if you're looking into technical roles, there are usually 2 sub categories - AI Research and AI Engineering. If you want to get into Research (think DeepMind, OpenAI, Anthropic, other labs), Mathematics is the best foundation given that you're focused more on algorithms + engineering. Coding/Programming is easier to pick up than Pure Maths and is increasingly commoditised. On the other hand, if you want to focus on ML Engineering, Computer Science is good enough but try to include more mathematical electives. The space is nascent when it comes to newer methods/architectures (LLMs, Vision models, etc.) while old school Machine Learning has been around for a long-time. Many AI researchers I speak to come from quite varied backgrounds (hence no hard line on Math vs Comp Sci) but the common thread is a strong Mathematical foundation. TLDR: Comp Sci teaches you how to execute code, Math teaches you even more primitives on how the algorithm and models work. Studying Math takes a more "root" level of learning while Comp Sci takes a more execution level of learning.

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