Journey Begins
I’m posting this late because it took some time to decide how I want to document my AI journey. When I was doing back-end coding (to be honest, I haven’t done much back-end coding lately), I wanted articles to get to the point, all the extra storyline was annoying. Towards my later years, I still wanted articles to get to the point but I also wanted to read about other Software Engineers’ journeys. I was trying to get my interest in coding back and thought if I could hear from others, about their like/love for the field, it might spark something in me. The industry is very uninviting and lonely for me, as an African American Woman, and these last couple of years I’ve become burnt-out on a regular basis. I decided, for now, that I will do both… get straight to the point and write about my journey.
With that said, a brief introduction. I’ve been working for about 30 years now. I have not done that exact calculation but about 26 of those years, I was a Software Engineer (Programmer). I took some time off, here and there, to try and get into the Film Industry, even moving out to Los Angeles. For two of those 4 years, I worked as a Graphics Developer. I decided that I liked Front End work the best and thought having more experience with Graphics would be helpful.
Let me also say, my degrees are in Mathematics not Computer Science. I took a couple of computer/programming courses in school, BASIC my senior year in high school, ADA in undergrad, and FORTRAN & Pascal in grad school. Outside of that, my programming knowledge is from on-the-job training. While in undergrad I had two Internships at NASA, in Hampton VA. The second summer I told them I wanted to learn C-Language and they sent me to the library to take a CBT. Their library was the best I had ever seen. My first job out of school was with Intergraph. I was all excited because they told me, during the interview, that the job would be geometry focused and geometry (& linear algebra) happen to be my favorite classes in school. After some twenty years and several projects, that first project continues to be my favorite.
Fast forward to today, during my initial AI research and taking several LinkedIn courses, Chatbot/Generative AI caught my attention. The course(s) was about writing prompts but I became curious about how it worked behind the scenes. I decided to look into how a Chatbot is created, from scratch.
Initial AI Research
A lot has been made of Artificial Intelligence taking over the working world. I heard thoughts of Software Programmers eventually being out of jobs, because of AI being able to do the coding. It wasn’t until I started doing research that I realized the seriousness of it all. I didn’t want to think of the possibility of losing jobs, so I figured that if I knew how it all worked, I could stay marketable. Since it was an election year I decided to focus my research on “social media manipulation”, along with creating my own Chatbot. It amazed me how much information (articles) there is on the subject.
As I mentioned in my first article I took a Professional Development career break to focus on learning to develop Generative AI Chatbots. While learning, I came across Vector Database, and with Linear Algebra being my favorite class in school, this became of interest to me. I’m still in the process of learning all about vector databases and AI in general.
At this point in my research, it appears RAND Corporation is a leading research website on AI, with articles such as “The Rise of Generative AI and the Coming Era of Social Media Manipulation 3.0” and “AI and the Future of Work”. I also became aware that President Joe Biden created an initiative to harness the benefits and mitigate the risks of AI. This initiative can be found at https://ai.gov/. President Biden signed an Executive Order to advance agencies’ efforts on AI across the federal government, building on previous actions to harness the benefits and mitigate the risks of AI. Yet, as we got closer to the election I hadn’t heard much on this initiative and wonder what the new administration will do with it.