It’s been a while since my last post on this web page went live at the end of 2021. In short, family happened and now I am a proud mom of 2 and have a lot going on. The focus shifted for me, but after some time now and nights that provide a bit better sleep quality I find myself in a place again where I actually have the cognitive capacity to explore existing and new interests.
Since last a lot has changed in the world as well. ChatGPT went live making large language models accessible and changing the way we work, interact with the web as well as learn, consume and spread knowledge. It’s fascinating times we live in right now and in a couple of years we will look back at this era and giggle about what has been trendy and how stupid we were in thinking about how the future will look like.
However with the rise of ai usage and its integration in our lives, I am philosophizing a lot in my head when I bring the kids to bed and think about what makes us human actually humans, how dependent should we be on technology that is provided by big companies and how can we live in embracing new technology but yet conserving what’s matters most.
So I thought my page will be my voice. Something that isn’t run through an LLM filter to make it sound more compelling and generic as chats and web search responses.
Here I want to explore and share with the world. And as a side effect, give some more content for another model to train. Because even though we all can sound like a successful CEO thanks to LLMs, there is still value in nurturing the actual skill of creating.
A disclaimer here to set your expectations right. I am not a native english speaker and writer, so there might be funny constructions. And I will use some AI in the publishing process, just to make sure that grammar and spelling doesn’t completely get out of hand. Also my writing in general got a bit wonky over time since I didn’t practice. The content will vary widely in what I find interesting in my life like exploring, learning, parenting, coding, science. You can also reach out and send some suggestions by email. The link down in the bottom of the page should work. Make sure to include something relevant in the subject line, so your mail doesn’t end up in spam.
Back to the post. I’m working with AI on a daily basis. For years I was working towards getting more and more into machine learning (ML). I studied bioinformatics with classes in neuroscience, neuroinformatics, and computational biology. I would say I know fairly about the basics and I was in it before it got cool. Can you imagine that I had to calculate back propagations on paper? It was in Germany, so who’s honestly surprised, but it’s such an essential part of deep learning, that nobody would do that manually today anymore. We have Python y’all. After graduation it was difficult to find a position where I could apply the concepts from university. But I could code a bit in different languages. So what did I do as a compromise? Go into software development which had a huge labour demand and later into data engineering. Where I had the most fun was in ML/AI application cases to make a business process smoother. Building, learning and understanding of both the problem and the solutions and being part of a team that likes sharing and working together.
Now with copilot, claude, codex or whichever you choose at hand, everything feels easy and development is more a question of priority and scope than technical feasibility. Because those tools will figure out a way. That’s so exciting in some way, because it lowers the threshold for many to start building. And that’s exactly what I wanted to encourage during my time as an organiser at PyLadies (mentorship group for female programmers using Python). There is a scary side to this way of coding as well. Lowering the threshold also comes with lowering the bar for all us vibe coders out there, we know too well, and security threats by people who don’t have good intentions.
While the models and services get better and better as you read this text, I feel like keeping sane and challenging the brain becomes super important. With algorithms that want us to believe that we live in a constant FOMO, I can physically feel how my creativity vanishes. So as a coping I started to explore off-screen hobbies. If there are recommendations to reduce screen time to kids and I am a mom, I hope I can also have some benefits from that. So nowadays I am exploring drawing and painting. So far I didn’t create much that I actually like, but since I am a big believer in grit, I just get going and have to get better. And maybe I will write about it at a future post. Hopefully within less than 5 years.
Now it’s time for you to leave the screen and produce something in the real world.
All the best, Christine