Who I am

My name is Sigurður Haukur Birgisson, but you can call me Haukur. I'm a 2nd year bachelor's student at the University of Gröningen, studying Artificial Intelligence (AI).

At 17, I was chasing the Icelandic national swimming team. I needed 2:55 in the 200m freestyle. I was stuck at 2:58. I trained constantly. With my coach, we focused on the 100m. During practice, I’d sprint 100m, rest until the timer hit 1:30, then sprint again. The goal was to be able to nail the 100m in sub-1:25. I'd do 10-12 reps of this. Sprint, rest, repeat. I still carry that mindset with me today. I’m not trying to swim the full 200m at practice. I’m focused on the 100m, sprinting it, and building from there. Piece by piece, like LEGO.

I've always been very playful with my language. "Hættu að snúa útúr" (stop twisting my words) - I heard it many times, but I never listened. I loved playing with words, making up new ones, and twisting the language in fun ways. When I started pursuing my interest in AI, NLP (Natural Language Processing) was an organic fit for me. I see it as a way to continue playing with the language with the added bonus of building something useful. I want to create tools tools that actually work and that people want to use. Right now, that means OCR systems for Icelandic, text-to-speech, language tools for languages that don't get the Big Tech treatment.

I want to share the messy work. The failures, the dead ends, the moments of doubt. I think there's a lot of value in showing the process, not just the polished end product. I want people to see that building something meaningful is often a messy, non-linear process, and that's okay. I'm also partly doing it for myself. I want to document my journey, the ups and downs, so I can look back on it and see how far I've come.

If you have stumbled upon this article, and read this far, thank you. Feel free to reach out to me (here) if you want to chat about anything related to AI, NLP, or just life in general. I'm always open to connecting with like-minded people. As for what's next (a question I get a lot): I don't know, "Það kemur í ljós" (it will become clear). I'm just taking it 100m at a time, building piece by piece, and seeing where it takes me.