Learning more about AI technologies!

As part of my ongoing self-learning efforts, and an effort to more about the general growth and usage of AI tools in the marketplace, I've just finished Maximillian Schwarzmüller's 'ChatGPT, Midjourney, DALL-E 3 & APIs – The Complete Guide' course on Udemy.com!

The course is an exhaustive introduction to contemporary AI technologies, with a significant focus on the use of ChatGPT, both in its app form and as a consumable API. Additionally, and to his credit, Schwarzmüller has done a very good job of keeping the course materials up to date with the latest developments, even adding whole new sections dedicated to specific products whilst I was working through the course. He also excels at ensuring the material is accessible both to developers and non-developers alike, taking time to break down terminology and show how key features work with demonstrable examples throughout the course.

There are sections that cover the use of these technologies in more practical settings for developers (such as component, unit test or dummy data generation, and the use of GitHub Copilot) that could have had a bit more depth and exploration, with only smaller, simpler examples of use shown. That said, Schwarzmüller does highlight the flaws and limitations of these technologies, with a frequent refrain of 'use your best judgment' being applied, encouraging users to remember that whilst these are impressive new developments, they should not solely rely on the output presented to them, and should scrutinise everything presented to them by it.

Overall, I'm glad I took the course, as it's given me a better understanding of the principles and potential applications of AI tools for developers. At present, I'm cautiously optimistic about their development in a support capacity for developers (for tasks like dummy data generation for testing, quick referencing for code snippets and such), but I personally have yet to find a use case in my ongoing work that necessitates the use of them, when pre-existing non-AI driven tools and IDE extensions already provide those options (I also have concerns about what data is used to train these services, and the security issues associated with that, but glad to see a healthy ongoing discussion in the community about these issues). I'm keen to keep an open mind and a watchful eye on future developments in the marketplace, though!