100 Days of Gen AI: Day 1

As a software engineer with 10+ years experience, I’m always trying to expand my skillset and learn new tech. Like most people, I’m especially curious about Generative AI. I prefer to learn through hands-on practice, but I haven’t been quite sure how to dive in. Then on Hacker News I recently came across this: Generative AI Handbook: a Roadmap for Learning Resources.

A plan forms. Let’s use this guide as a starting point and begin putting in a few hours of practice each day outside of my day job.

The Plan

  1. 100 days of focused learning, two hours per day
  2. Write about my progress along the way to record my foibles and mistakes, while also holding myself accountable to my learning goal

Why 100 days? 100 days x 2 hrs/day = 200 hrs. 200 hrs seems like a reasonable amount of time to develop some basic knowledge. Plus 100 days is a round number and sounds good. :)

Day 1

I previously read the first dozen or so chapters of Generative AI Handbook: a Roadmap for Learning Resources. It seems to be more theory and math focused. This is interesting, but I really want to get hands-on with building something first. I can then come back to the math and theory if/when I hit limitations in what I can build due to my lack of foundational theory. So I think this may not be the best guide for me at the beginning.

It seems like this hands-on Microsoft course might be a better fit for me to start: Generative AI For Beginners.

So I went through all of Lesson 00: Course Setup, until I got stymied by this:

For the coding lessons, we are using the Azure OpenAI Service. You will need access to the Azure OpenAI service and an API key to run this code. You can apply to get access by completing this application.

It seems I will need to apply for access, and this access is only granted to “eligible customers” (source):

Azure OpenAI requires registration and is currently only available to approved enterprise customers and partners

It looks like signing up with my personal email isn’t going to cut it. Perhaps I can sign up using my work email? Unfortunately that’s all I have time for today. A problem for another day…