Continuing my Journey in AI
I am a technologist whho has spent the last 30+ years in technology.
I was aelectronics communications technician for 10.5 years working on muktimillion dollar weapons systems: They ranged from Air Launch Cruise Missiles, Avionics on several different airframes. In addition I worked airborne communications systems to include to include terrain following terrain avoidance radar, radio navigation systems, weather radar altimeters, and radios.
After voluntarily leaving the Air Force my career transitioned into telecommunications, computer networking, networks, high performance computing and various other technologies. I have mostly worked for various equipment vendors, SaaS companies, and some time doing research at the Army as a contractor.
In 2010 while working on my Master's degree, I took an Artificial Intelligence class on machine learning. At that time I found the course interesting, but had no idea how I could use the course. We used Matlab to run our machine-learning experiments. I had no concept of Python programming and I would say the machine learning ecosystem wasn't what it is now.
In 2014 I began taking some self-paced study on machine-learning via online, YouTube and Udemy. Again in 2018, I decided to take a couple more courses on Coursera with Andrew Ng.
Once Again, I entered another AI program Purdue University Global, Post Graduate Program in AI and Machine Learning. I mentioned all of the preceding courses I had taken for a couple of reasons. One reason is my actual jobs as a customer success engineer, cloud security engineer, and networking engineer over the last decade or so have never involved me working with or in Machine Learning. In addition, after every course or sequence of courses I had taken I didn't do anything with the learnings and we all know what happens. If you don't use it, you will lose it.
My interest in AI has never waned as I have purchased several books and attended lots of online seminars. In addition, I purchased, raspberry pis, Nvidia hardware, and Intel Nuck, to experiment with computer vision
The common theme I have observed as well as heard from other engineers and ML practitioners is to make progress in pursuit of advancing my knowledge, is you need to build projects, write about my learnings and share the new knowledge with others. The other major point is the need to network or try and learn with like-minded people.
Finally, I decided to put those suggestions into practice. As I begin to implement the above suggestions, I will chronicle my journey here. I will share where my projects are and link the blog entries about my learning to my completed projects and learnings. I will also begin to post to other social media accounts as well. This will be huge for me because I have never done anything like this before.
Originally I was a part of The Datatalk book club ML Zoomcamp 2023 cohort. Unfortunately, I had to drop to self-paced mode, but I will still complete the program it will take me a bit longer. That is okay because I know this is a journey as I am a lifelong learner. I enjoy learning new things but also I will decide what I choose to learn.
So for those who are interested, please follow me. I need constructive criticism because that also fosters growth. In turn, I will give my feedback on how I plan to address the suggestions.
Finally, I am hopeful that others can learn from me as well, because I love helping others achieve their goals as well.
respectfully submitted. Thank You.
Bennie
