I’ve been wanting to learn more about AI lately and even got a few books. Have I read them? No, well that’s a lie. I’m at least a chapter deep into a few. However I wanted to spend some of my lunch break finding something quick online.
Since I’ve been using Coursera for the Google UX Certificate, I decided to just search for “AI” and see if there was something quick I could do over a series of lunch breaks. I wanted something small and digestable to get my feet wet. I came across the course “Learning TensorFlow: the Hello World of Machine Learning”
I’m still calling it Taser Face though and I get the view of Taser Face from Guardians of the Galaxy in the back of my head. But it’s called TensorFlow. Believe me I keep double checking. What is Tensorflow? Honestly, I don’t know still what it was and if I was actually using it.
The course started with an intro of how I was going to use a neural network to teach a program. It then made me go incognito to log into Google Cloud Lab. It said I have 45 minutes to complete the lab and then it’d reset. Is that a thing? I assume it was server things that cost money, and as part of the course they set it up.
The course gave clear directions on how to get to where I needed to go, even though I felt like I had no idea where I was, and I was just glad to have a road map. After a sentence or two of explaining what I’d do, I copy and pasted code one cell at a time. Then another explanation, and copy and paste. I got the jist of it I think, but it assumed some basic Algebra that took me a minute to remember. I ran the program successfully and it seemed real interesting after the explanation of what it did.
What was the program exactly? It was to show alternating numbers. Example being 1, 4, 7… then the idea was to train the program to predict the next number in succession based on what is given. After that it gave a log of attempts to learn, and it went from a small number to a negative number with -8 at the end. So I’m not sure what the power number was for, or why so many extra digits past. Was there no perfection? I didn’t understand that. All I understood was that the negative meant good, so I was happy about that.
The problem? Since I’m still new to this, and it was a “Get my hands wet” situation, I don’t think I retained much of anything other than what I did. The code? No idea, just copied and pasted it. I couldn’t tell you a single thing. The bummer is, I couldn’t even go back because it was in that Google Cloud Lab that has a time limit. I did only take 20 minutes to complete it all though. I may have felt rushed at the beginning and tried to copy and paste the small stuff without re-reading it all. I was fearful I’d lose all progress, because it literally said I’d lose all progress if I left.
Overall, my first time into AI stuff was good.
My AI Takeaways:
- I need to brush up more on basic Algebra
- Google Cloud is a thing, and it costs money
- Redo future courses over and over so it sticks into memory
- Understand what the output actual means, instead of taking the courses word for it that “That means its good!”