It's been almost a year and a half since ChatGPT launched, and interest in artificial intelligence (AI) has skyrocketed overnight. A gold rush ensued. Everyone and their grandmother scrambled to learn about AI to try and get involved. There's been a plethora of information that's been thrown around the internet, and everyone has something to say about the technology. Most of these resources lack depth, and most speak in generalities. Discussion typically is constrained to news of AI product or feature launches and their capabilities. Yet, very few voices in the AI space actually understand what they're talking about when it comes to AI. 

If you really want to be a part of the AI world and understand how it can be leveraged, you need to roll your sleeves up, pop open your code editor, and tinker with it. To help guide you in this journey, Nataraj Sindam is someone to follow. His work with 100 Days of AI and its takeaways will help developers, marketers, and product managers have a deeper understanding of AI and empower them to build the future.

Getting Started

If you're a developer, product manager, marketer, or simply an AI enthusiast and you don't know where to begin, then you're not alone. The field of AI is moving so rapidly that it's outstripping Moore's law. With the breakneck speed of development, it's hard for even seasoned tech professionals to follow along, much less the casual observer. Factor in the failure rate of AI projects being as high as 80% (according to the Harvard Business Review), and it becomes even more difficult to keep up. Yet, due to its rapid development, demand for AI skills is also rapidly increasing. Those who understand how to use AI also have access to more competitive salaries. Proficiency in AI also allows for the creation of more intelligent solutions or features that were not previously possible. More than anything, it's clear that AI is one of the most impactful technologies of our lifetimes, and by learning AI, individuals can actively participate in this transformation. 

Meet the AI Expert Who's Also an Investor and Product Manager

As a top contributor on Hackernoon, Nataraj has made it onto the front page with his 100 Days of AI series. Based on the interest in his writing, it's clear Nataraj is someone who knows what they're talking about when it comes to AI. Nataraj is also a Product Manager at Microsoft Azure, a startup and investing podcast host, and also an investor in 20+ companies globally. With a master's in mathematics, he was able to learn about machine learning early on, which perfectly prepared him to learn Large Language Models (LLMs) like OpenAI's GPT-3 and GPT-4. Furthermore, when Nataraj worked for a large US healthcare company to improve patient care through technology, it opened his eyes to the transformative potential of leveraging the latest technologies to solve humanity's most pressing problems. His experiences pushed him to crave deeply engaging conversations about technology and thus pushed him to start 100 Days of AI. 

100 Days of AI

Just on day 1, Nataraj teaches us how to convert a newsletter into a podcast episode with Open AI. Next, he teaches us how to infer, using clever prompts with LLMs to extract insights, sentiments, and trends. He also goes on a deeper dive to explain concepts like Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG). RAG allows LLMs to build on a specialized body of knowledge to answer questions more accurately. He then shows how to utilize Semantic Kernels (A software development kit allowing developers to integrate AI services) to conduct SWOT analysis and design thinking for businesses. Nataraj goes on to talk about the limitations of pre-trained models like GPT-3 and GPT-4. Pretrained base models like GPT-3 are trained on a vast amount of data. In the case of GPT-3, it's all the data on the internet. So, it's important to understand instruction fine-tuning in order to give the LLM models context on the internal data in your use case or your organization for better understanding and results.

Finally, Nataraj includes ideas for AI Products at the end of each article, practically giving away business ideas to opportunistic developers or entrepreneurs for free. 

Now, ‍what will you build? 

For those who are working with AI, Nataraj believes data will become the new oil. Nataraj points out that social media companies are setting up $60 million deals with AI companies to train on their data. Small Language Models are also something to watch out for as LLMs might not always be the best solution. Leaner language models take less compute to train and although they may be trained on less data, they may be trained on more quality data. 

AI is already being used to build tons of new features that weren't possible before. There's never been a better time to be a builder, so learn AI with Nataraj and start building the future.