In lieu of a CV, I have included my personal essays from an application to Harvard Precollege Summer school, as they are a fair indication of my personality and experience. They roughly cover the same range that a CV and interview would, and are thus given as an ersatz-CV. There may also be non-personal essays of mine posted elsewhere on the site, if that is of interest. Essays

Harvard Summer School High School Program Application Caspar Felten Jan 2024

Essays Instructions: Because we are interested in how you think and how you write, application essays must be your (the applicant’s) own words. If, in the composition of your essays, any sources including a dictionary, website, generative AI (such as ChatGPT), or people were consulted, add a sentence to the top of your essay stating what sources were used, and how they were used. Essays should be between 250-350 words. There is a character limit of 3000.

Essay 1 - What course(s) at Harvard Summer School interest you and why?

I am interested in ‘Mathematical Elements of Artificial Intelligence’ because I would like to learn more about the theoretical foundations of AI. I did an AI course last summer (aicamp.org), which was mostly applied, but I especially enjoyed the theoretical components. I have been learning about basic concepts like perceptrons and the kernel trick, and am currently reading “The Deep Learning Revolution”. This has given me a broad conceptual understanding of AI, and I have some applied practice. What I am missing is the bridge between the two, a mathematical understanding. The mathematics of AI is also related to a number of other interests of mine like set theory, formal logic, and systems. What fascinates me about AI is the way it is able to deal with contradictions. Hard systems are generally limited in scope, and cannot deal with irregularities when their rules contradict (as expert systems demonstrated). AI circumvents this and can hold multiple contradictory rules by assigning a priority to those rules. This makes it far more flexible and powerful, which I find very interesting. I also have a number of questions and ideas about AI and would enjoy discussing them, especially as some may arise out of misconceptions I’d like to correct. For example, I considered whether cellular automatons could be designed (perhaps evolutionarily) to model certain complex behaviours. These automatas’ outputs could then be incorporated as parameters in a larger ML model.

I am interested in “Perspectives on the Meaning of Life” both academically and as an opportunity for personal enrichment. I have read Stoic, Existentialist, and Absurdist works, but not Kierkegaard and Augustine yet. I am very interested in doing so, as I have read some secondary works on them and found their ideas fascinating. I have recently been studying Leibniz’s monadology, and wrote an essay integrating monadology with agent-causal free will for a student philosophy conference. I found his idea of the “best possible world” an intriguing, if direct, answer to the meaning of life. Since my school doesn’t offer philosophy as a subject, my learning has been mostly extracurricular and informal, so I look forward to a more guided curriculum, and discussing these concepts with other students who share my interest.

Essay 2 - What does academic integrity look like in the age of Generative AI? How has this impacted you as a student?

Generative AI does not seem to be a new existential threat to academic integrity, but rather makes existing methods of cheating much easier to access. It has always been possible to have someone else write, edit, or otherwise generate your work, and plagiarism is ever-present. The difference is that now anyone with a smartphone has instant access to a powerful AI ghostwriter, editor, and researcher, at any time of day. The risk of detection is much lower compared to traditional plagiarism1, and there is less effort involved. I believe the most fruitful way of dealing with these challenges is by addressing the motivations for employing such a tool, rather than trying to ban the tool itself. Attempting to detect it is fraught with difficulty1, and outright banning it is impractical. Bans would also limit positive and legitimate uses of AI, such as spell-checking, testing yourself, or explaining concepts. It’s not rational for people to cheat in an educational setting where they are trying to learn. However, someone under stress from time pressure, or someone who doesn’t understand the material sufficiently is far more susceptible to searching for shortcuts, including plagiarism or using AI. For me personally, my moral compass and purely selfish interests align perfectly in abstaining from using generative AI. In Britain, where I go to school, grades are assigned based on public, standardised exams, which are done offline and proctored. My performance in coursework and class has no direct bearing on my grades, and is really practice for the exam. If I rely on an AI to do my work, even for something as trivial as spell-checking, I will not be able to gain or improve my skill in that area, and ultimately be hurting my exam results. In the exam I have no access to AI, and my poor spell-checking abilities would show through. Thus I am incentivised to not use AI assistance at all in my work, even when it would be acceptable in terms of academic integrity, like spell-checking. 1: https://www.cs.umd.edu/article/2023/05/ai-generated-content-actually-detectable

Essay 3 - Reflect on a book you have read or a film you have seen where you strongly related to a character. State and describe the character, their traits and significance, and how they personify you.

In the book “The Hobbit”, Bilbo Baggins sets out from his little home to rob a dragon. He comes back to his home in the Shire having done a great deal, and weary from his travels. There is much in Bilbo that I relate to, especially his experience in coming home. Like how Bilbo is away from the Shire in his lengthy quest, I spend long periods of time away from home, at a boarding school. While not as dramatic as Bilbo’s adventure, boarding school is hectic and intense, and can be very stressful, especially compared to the more placid holidays at home When Bilbo returns home, everyone seems to see him as a little different, and nothing is quite the same as it was. Gandalf exclaims that he is “not quite the hobbit that [he was]”. I have the same experience, I am always a bit different from when I left, and others notice. Perhaps I am a little taller, or my voice has changed, or my hair is different. Or there are deeper, less obvious changes to my personality. The fact remains, I am never quite the same as others remember. In the same way, nothing is ever quite the way I remember it either. Furniture is rearranged, my family has changed as well, and everything feels just a bit different. When Bilbo arrives at his house, he finds much of his belongings being auctioned off, as he was “Presumed Dead”. Similarly, my room has gradually transitioned to becoming my sister’s room in my absence. Every year that I’m away, my home seems to contain just a little bit less of me in it, it feels just a little bit less like my home. Like Bilbo, I come back home, but never really return completely. Bilbo calls his adventure a “There and Back Again, a Hobbit’s Holiday”. For him the adventure was the holiday, leaving home was the unusual part. For me, however, it is returning home that is the holiday, the break from what is normal. None of this is really a bad thing. Like Bilbo, I have had a wonderful time away from home, and had many fun adventures and don’t regret boarding. However, it does make “home” more uncertain, and I never seem to quite come “Back Again” fully, it feels more and more like coming home is visiting.

Essay 4 - If you had a free weekend during the academic year, how would you spend it and why?

My weekends are usually taken up by lessons on Saturday, climbing club, play rehearsals, homework and social activities. If I had an entirely free weekend I would spend it on a particular interest or project of mine. Presently in my free time, I am designing a clock. During the holidays I spent time researching historical clock designs, as well as attempting to design my own solutions from scratch. While I can design parts like the gearing with little additional input, certain parts, like the escapement mechanism, are more complex. I initially simply copied existing designs, but this was not very satisfying. I found a book that details how to design escapements, and some of the mathematics and principles behind it. Using this, I designed an escapement, and tested its movement virtually, and once I finish the design I plan to CNC-machine the parts in my school’s design lab. If I had a completely free weekend now, I would like to spend the time working on my clock, because I am enjoying the process of designing it, and learning something new in many different subjects: the history of clock design, CAD and CNC-milling, and mathematics. I also have a number of essays that I would like to write and submit to various school magazines. I am presently working on an idea for an essay about the rapid programme of reform, privatisation, and economic liberalisation happening in Argentina after Javier Milei’s election. While similar changes have been implemented elsewhere, Milei’s economic “shock therapy” is notable for its scale and speed, and will be an interesting test of whether economies can survive such rapid regulatory changes. Other changes are more unusual, like the planned dissolution of the Central Bank of Argentina, which would make Argentina the 11th country without a central bank, and by far the largest (the next largest is Panama, and the rest are microstates). My last submission to the mathematics magazine was rejected for not being sufficiently accessible and too narrow in scope, so I will keep that in mind for this one.