One of my friends reached out to me curious about trying to build a simple AI bot. In my social circles, I have observed many friends and family showing curiosity in learning to code. Many of these friends do not come from a formal programming background but want a way to get started. As AI continues to gain influence in our culture, I feel passionate about making sure that people feel that AI can become a helpful tool and grow a learning culture. In my view, it’s important that our workforce can adapt to a more AI-enabled environment. I believe anyone can learn to code. I also believe that citizens should feel agency and empowerment to direct AI to build a better way of life. In this brief post, I wanted to outline a few tools that would help an early-stage developer start exploring the world of AI bot construction.

• Code Academy using Python: I greatly appreciate Code Academy for helping people “get started” in Python and JavaScript. We learn best when we connect to a concept and immediately apply it. Code academy was one of the first tools to encourage a “hands-on” approach to learning computer languages quickly.
  • Link: https://www.codecademy.com/catalog/language/python
• Google AI Studio: Before jumping into tons of code, it’s ideal to explore what might be possible. Google AI Studio provides a simple tool to explore AI question-and-answer experiences with Google Gemini. The tool provides a nice prompt gallery to help you explore interesting uses and prompt patterns. By pressing the “get the code” button, the tool will draft your active prompt into Python or many other languages.
  • Link: Google AI Studio
• Google Gemini Python SDK: Once you have a feel for the Python language and the concepts of Gemini, you can explore more detailed tutorials for leveraging the features of Google Gemini.
  • Link: https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/get-started/tutorial?lang=python

These three baby steps will be enough to get you started with making a very simple bot.

As you want to explore making more robust “front-ends” or user interfaces for your bot, it will become more important to learn skills like Python back-end API design, HTML, Javascript, and responsive design. The following Free code camp links will help you explore those topics.

• https://www.freecodecamp.org/learn/2022/responsive-web-design/
• https://www.codecademy.com/learn/introduction-to-javascript
• https://www.freecodecamp.org/learn/front-end-development-libraries

If you follow the FreeCodeCamp tutorials rigorously, you can achieve a few certifications. I encourage early-stage developers to post their learning projects on a public GitHub account. If you were going to hire an interior designer for your home, you would ask potentials to show a sample of work. For UX designers and programmers, it’s important to build a portfolio showing your journey of learning, your work quality, or your project impact.

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