Updates on my personal AI Journey

 

I started aggressively taking up AI training the hard way, signing up for the AIAP Foundations Course, a six-month program providing datasets for a series of machine learning steps such as regression and classification. My task is to clean the data, add some features, and then use the data to predict student outperformance, hotel no-shows and loan defaults. This course is not taught by human beings and is largely objective-driven and marked by algorithms. The program's efficiency allowed me to complete the certificate in just 2 months, and I'm ready to take on more AI training from other course providers.

In September, I should be confident enough to get into the Apprenticeship program, given that I have self-taught software engineering basics like pushing stuff to GitHub and using ChatGPT to refactor code and improve my coding skills. 

Wisdom and skills come with a price, and I'm intimidated by the rate at which AI progresses. The course I attended is 2 years behind what folks are using right now, and I've not even started in NLP, let alone LLM coding technologies. Most professionals are light years behind the latest RAG or Agentic AI materials. 

Simultaneously, I'm reading The Generalist Advantage to understand how people plan careers today. This strange book initially looks like a snake oil sales text for folks peddling humanities degrees, which I enjoy reading for pleasure. But as it turns out, it's a great career guide for engineers and scientists who may fall into the specialisation trap and advises on the valuable soft skills required to climb he corporate ladder. Of course, if the book is right, I might also be managing my career wrongly, as I spent almost my first 10 years of my IT career getting IT certifications - I should have started on my CFA in my final year of University.

The book has awakened my greater ambition as I incorporate some serious AI skillsets with my finance and legal skills. Employment is secondary for me; I really want to gain access to a real-world data set and slice my way toward actionable business policies out of my findings. The Yahoo Finance data I use is now child's play compared to what I have worked on. 

Finally, as I pick up new skills, I'm monetising others. 

The link to my AI Explorer's Masterclass is now up here, and we are getting sales : 

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ai-explorers-masterclass-tickets-1378432170729?aff=oddtdtcreator