As a first-gen PhD who had very little idea about what a PhD was, the pivotal moment was when I internalized: The PhD is the *start* of the career, not the end, *even though* it's a "terminal" degree.
That mindset empowered me to form sustainable research agendas (not just paper ideas).
In fact, this realization gave me the courage to think differently about how Explainable AI was being done.
That's how the initial ideas of Human-centered Explainable AI were born.
@upol “Sustainable research agendas” is a really good way of putting it. I’ve noticed that I naturally think about research in chunks about the size of a paper or a single study (a few papers). Longer-term research agendas require much more thought.
@mmin @upol just like in rapid prototyping, I view short papers as probing for potential research directions. Being able to fuse the ideas of two short papers already opens up a potential mid-term research direction. Yet, I often underestimate the fact that a direction is not an agenda, but a prerequisite for it.
