I was brought up without any chance to learn social skills when most people do - soon as they can talk, they're at it and learning without knowing it. (edit Nov18 2020) I recently heard that the first 5 years or so of a childs social development are very much the most critical. So I duckduckgo'd it, with mass results. My first five years was something like being only able to interact in any way, with anyone 99% of the time, with one person, my 5 or so yr older step-brother who hated me more or as much as I've ever since even known anyone to detest another so so much. He was incessantly doing everything he could to make me feel like I was stupid, worthless, not even worth living - threw me in the deep end of a pool at about 4 yrs old, very close to drowning, if the pool was 2 feet wider..

Lived in the boonies, so no way to get to anyone's house even if I did somehow meet someone. I had to be with him all the time with parents leaving him in charge. Also, none of us were even Allowed to have friends over, so.. always my step-brother..

Parent died a few years ago and few months before confessed to my sister that he and the woman he married after he divorced my mom (before memories) - soon after they married, they vowed to each other that they would live to love each other and enjoy each others company, and only critical stuff like feeding the kids even got to the back burner. When they came home, always - kids, downstairs, be quiet, be good. And they'd go in their room. So I pretty much had nobody except my 5 yr older step-brother who hated me like nothing I've really seen or completely comprehended in the 45 years since.

At least I got to like computers. Started BASIC 78. After HS I just looked at the local Tech Inst. and college, and signed up for what I wanted. Started AI courses in '86, and lucked out, the AAAI annual was in the only USA city I could get to, bummed a ride with fellow students & instructor. That was all great fun! So was prog. 6502 assembly.. as fun as that was, prog. IBM Mainframe assembly was just the opposite.. worse than COBOL!

So I'm racing the 100's of billionaires/billion dollar companies to write the AI. (and I have a plan..) If I (one in a million) do it first.. I will make the world such a better place to live, and peoples lives so much more fulfilling, and happy, and just better.. Willing of course, wouldn't force anyone like that religion that doesn't use tech, even light bulbs.

Though.. my chances are tiny.. but any is better than none.. because there is no 2nd place. And.. if China or N. Korea do it first.. scary thought.

I just need the hardware, since mine was Top of the line 12 years ago, and even upgraded the GPU 6 years ago, now my GPU is 2nd from bottom of able to run cuda. So I save. (ed: getting there, 4 or 5 more months and I could probably get a low-end semi-pro setup with a quadro GPU with 48GB, and case/MB system hopefl'y room for 3 more GPU cards)

Wish me luck? Cheers