AI is the greatest gift to every self-starter

I thought of writing this post last month when I read that Duncan Sheik had died. He was the singer-songwriter with the hit single Barely Breathing, released in 1996. Now, you might be asking yourself “what does the death of a one-hit-wonder musician from the 90’s have to do with AI or self-starters”?

Well, hit play on this and travel back in time while I connect it to me.

▶ Play “Barely Breathing” by Duncan Sheik on the site

As I read Duncan Sheik’s NYT obituary, his hit song started playing in my head and I remembered this year and time in my life very clearly. I was one year out of high school working as a PC and printer technician in a small computer shop in Denver in a part of town known as the DTC, or Denver Tech Center. Believe it or not, it had actually taken a bit of time and effort to get this job.

At the time I graduated high school in 1995 I couldn’t figure out how to pay for college but I knew I wanted to work in computers. So I got a job at Computer City (a big box retailer) on the sales floor just to get proximity to their tech department. They let employees borrow the tech books they had and I read through those in my off work hours to learn enough to get A+ Certified for PC repair. I parlayed that into a job in the Computer City tech department and then got enough experience to go off to this small computer shop in the DTC, which built and serviced computers for tech and telecom companies with fancy offices in the heart of Denver’s very nascent tech scene.

While working in this small shop I learned from one of my coworkers of another certification that might enable me to land a job in one of those fancy offices: The Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer, or MCSE. It was a certification that consisted of 6 tests on the topics of Windows NT 4.0, Exchange (MS’ corporate email server), and Internet Information Server (IIS), which was just at version 1.0. Each test cost $100 to take regardless of whether you passed or failed. Given that my share of monthly rent at that time was $200, this felt like a big investment to me. My coworker had training materials for the first four tests on DVD, which I obviously pirated (apologies to the original creators of this content, whoever and wherever you are).

Around the same time, like many 19 year olds from any era, I found myself with a broken heart related to some youthful nonsense and unrequited love. I decided it was time for a break from Denver, so I’d quit my job and drove to meet a friend from high school that was living near Cocoa Beach, Florida. Given my mapping at the time, that’s around 36 hours of actual drive time from Denver, which I did in my beater car that had only an FM/AM radio. I can’t tell you how many times I heard Duncan Sheik’s voice croon Barely Breathing on that drive, but it was enough that even thinking of the singer and song immediately transported me back to this time in my life.

I spent the next month crashing on my friend’s couch and working through those training DVDs. I had brought my big tower computer and CRT with me so I could study and, of course, engage in a regular LAN party with my temporary roommate. After a month, I drove back to Denver (with Duncan’s voice keeping me company), got another PC tech job, took those tests, bought books for the others and worked and studied my way through the rest. It all took some time, but I passed all six tests on the first try, saving myself from paying to take them multiple times.

I ended up using that certification to land myself a role as a contract software tester at Microsoft in 1998, working in Redmond on the upcoming Windows 2000 release. I had arrived! I was in! But that was really only the beginning of my adventures in learning inside and outside my day job. I eventually did find my way to college and even engaged in learning outside that day role when I started going to NYC Ruby meetings in the evenings.

Ok, so what the hell does this have to do with AI? Well, now, if I want to learn anything, I have an oracle I can ask. AI will answer all my questions, do research, build visualizations, explainer videos, and create any kind of learning materials I can think of. Even frontier intelligence that is effectively unlimited for this kind of thing costs only $200 per month (the equivalent of $93 in 1996 dollars, less than one of those MCSE tests). Although it can be had for far less, thanks to open models and the fierce competition between the frontier companies to deliver the best intelligence at the lowest cost.

For anyone that has the desire and will to learn about almost anything, there has never been a better time to be alive. Even when I think of learning to program Rust in 2018, that process would have been so much easier and faster if I had the AI of 2026 available to me. You still have to do the work, but now you have a tireless, always on helper and tutor that is more than happy to help and answer questions.

When I think about all the time, money, and effort I’ve spent over the last thirty years just getting access to the materials and people to learn from, I almost can’t believe it’s all just available now for so little at any time, day or night. I can’t imagine where I’d be if my 19 year old self had access to this kind of thing. He’d still be young and dumb and have no idea how to make things happen, but he’d probably figure it out much, much faster.

And as a software creator, it’s even better. I’m creating all sorts of programs for just me to use. My next post will be about one of those projects. For self-starters, AI and the internet are the greatest gift ever. It’s incredible what’s available to you, if you just think to ask and make the effort.

For anyone that has had trouble self-starting, the great news is that AI significantly reduces the activation energy to start the journey. Start with a question, iterate and dive a little deeper, ask for code, visuals and examples, and jump off from there. The only limits are your own ambition, drive and determination.