TL;DR Twenty years ago, I coded in Visual Basic; now I’m asking AI to imagine it’s me.
People are still rightly interested in getting into coding, and so on. Information Technology, however, isn’t just limited to programming – it’s really far more than getting a computer to do what you want. It’s already in its title – Anyone who takes a course in Information Technology is getting himself/herself into the technology of information – which, sure, involves computers. But there’s more to technology than just computers, more to information than just databases, and there’s more to information than just programming…
…and, well, here I am convincing myself that I still have it in me to see what all that is. I finished the course of Information Technology more than 20 years ago – graduated 2004, to be precise – at an age when we were still learning Visual Basic, graduating off of Turbo C, and the up-and-coming Java back then was a mere mention during an ‘Elective’ (optional) subject called Object Oriented Programming.
I WAS able to apply whatever I gathered from personal experience and from what they taught us (and what my parents invested in) in College, but up until today I hear myself saying that any learning I did gather eventually ‘plateau’d’… or, as soon as we were more or less used to handling the major common concerns brought up in Technical Support, there wasn’t much learning to be had. Sure, there were spikes every now and then – promotions do give you those quick learning opportunities – but for the most part, when you’ve learned enough, you’re more or less done learning.
It’s sad, because that whole phrase about me being done learning was more or less self-declared – I became more concerned about being comfortable than learning. I never realized back then that if you wanted to learn, you will ALWAYS find something to read, to watch, to listen to… But no, I was more interested in maintaining the status quo, and slacking – actually, being more intentional in NOT learning, if only to underline that a company is paying me to do nothing.
It’s sad, and I admit it. I’m ashamed that I never acted on any hint of ambition, and I was really just more focused on pleasure and comfort, in and out of the office.
We’ve come a long way from IT, haven’t we? Haha, I’m sorry, I got a little sidetracked there. But I guess it’s a good thing to have in mind, for me to address in the future – or, maybe here and now. We’ll see.
Anyway, I worked in Tech Support – started as a rep like anyone else, got promoted to the quality department (and up until now I think I got promoted a little too early, contrary to my feelings at the time which had me proud to jump so quickly up the ladder), did my learning, got to that plateau… Moved to another line of business, learned from the new business and the new environment.
I resign, my Dad passes away, and I’m left to work, unemployed, because I needed to represent the family for any dealings concerning whatever my Dad left behind. Not feeling resentful, at all – in fact, there was a lot to learn there too – about how the government works, and, again, regarding a new business, and also more about moving through environments.
Eventually, things happen in my life, and I find myself getting into another job – but this time, the lines between office and home have been blurred – From a tech support representative, now I became a virtual assistant. There was learning there too –
– and, before I go on, I want to go ahead and specify that no matter how disconnected all those other learnings (in new businesses, and in new environments) may seem to be from the general idea of Information Technology, let me assure you, there was, at the very least, real Information to be gathered from all this experience, insufficient as it may seem.
Anyway. Yeah, it was another business, another (virtual) environment, another opportunity to learn and enhance social abilities, and so on… And, in fact, I was enjoying the fact that I didn’t necessarily just work at home. Now that I think about it, I was able to bring and open my laptop, and work, not at home, but at a computer shop, or a restaurant or hotel with a good-enough internet connection. I was able to bring and open my laptop, and work at my brother’s cool dining area while the California sun was baking everything else outside, or my other brother’s porch to take in the air and the sounds of suburbia in Virginia. Sorry, I’m indulging here, but I was also able to bring and open my laptop and work, not only at the home of my brother from another mother in Dubai, but also at a hookah bar or the nearby cafe where I befriended the local attendants.
Wild times – as a tech support rep, as someone who had to fill in for Dad, as a virtual assistant – and, now, as a Pastor. A Pastor, that is, with all this experience, lacking as it is, but at least I’m more or less aware of what I want and what needs to be done to get what I want, integrating all I’ve learned about IT to project the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ to as many people as possible.
I’m a firm believer in the positive interpretations of what was told to Daniel in the second part of Daniel 12:4 – knowledge shall increase. We will keep learning. We will keep integrating. We will keep evolving.
To that end, and the entire point of all my nostalgia and reminiscing, is really just to build up towards what I’ve decided to do – that is, to learn more about AI. To go deeper than the ‘trend’ and to understand it from my standpoint of all I’ve gathered and learned since I got my Bachelor’s Degree for IT, again, last 2004.
I’ve gone as far as installing local AI models on both my current computer and my laptop, and testing them versus online models. My intention and desire to have a standalone, portable AI on my laptop which is trained on not just my personal blog (where you’re most likely reading this on right now), but also from books I’ve read and want to read, and transcripts of videos and music that I’ve heard and watched, or want to hear and watch.
Quite the huge task, now that I’m writing about it. I understand that datasets are important, but considering my limitations in hardware, I’m having a hard time integrating just the Bible, with certain resource heavy models that CAN take in whatever data you feed it. So that project isn’t going as fast as I want it to go, and therefore, any learning that’s going on there isn’t as optimal as I’d like.
Which brings me to another aspect to AI, or rather, its usage, that I still am interested in taking advantage of – Scripting. That’s right, if you can’t build the dataset, then I think the next best thing is asking the right questions to the AIs that have that extensive, most possibly cloud-based and hardware-backed dataset and processing power.
I catch online scammers social media accounts with their hooks to get the average Joe into the AI craze, with infographics that ‘tease’ them into buying into a subscription that’d charge them a minimum amount of dollars a month to get into AI-curated introductions to AI, if only to get people just deep enough to know the very general gist behind this brand and how it differs from this other company – without actually getting people started.
One interesting thing I keep seeing in these infographics is their suggested strategies towards asking the right questions, or doing the right prompts with the AI to get the best results. One common suggestion was to tell the AI, as part of your question, to have it ‘imagine’ that it is, say, a top-notch programmer, or a wise Christian sage, or a chemical engineer; ‘Imagine you’re a successful pharmacist who’s worked for decades at a very frequented branch of a well-known pharmaceutical company. What medicine would you prescribe for an elderly woman suffering from sporadic headaches, mostly in the afternoon?’
You’d come up with specific questions for specific answers, and considering the VAST dataset that these huge AI programs are set up to draw their answers from, you may learn a thing or two.
Roles are what had me writing this long-assed introduction, only to ask myself, here and now – If I wanted to tell one of these more powerful AIs to imagine they were me… what would I tell it about myself? Or, say, how would I craft my role? What stuff I should I include, what shouldn’t I mention?
What would you tell AI about yourself?
(to be continued)
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