Copilot Helped Me Create an AI Learning Plan

On Friday, May 30, I wrapped up a project I’ve been on since mid-January. It was a fun project spent helping a team complete an Azure Migration, and with the migration completed back in mid-April, I knew at the beginning of May that I’d be rolled off on th 30th. While I had hoped to start another project right away, luck (and timing) put me on the bench for at least a couple weeks. For those non-consultants out there, “the bench” is for consultants who don’t have any billable work to do so they spend it (or should spend it) on personal development.

Keeping the axe sharp

I’ve long paid for my own Pluralsight account, and I love reading blogs (and books), but once I found out I was going to be hitting the bench, I knew I wanted to make the time as productive as possible. I also knew that I needed to get deeper into the world of AI. While I love learning new things, if left to my own devices, I can sometimes go down unproductive rabbit holes. To that end, I decided to use Microsoft Copilot to help generate a 2-3 week learning plan focused on AI.

The Prompts

I used the following prompt to get started:

I will have 2-3 weeks that I can spend learning, and I’d like a learning plan for AI that incorporates videos from youtube, courses from pluralsight, courses on coursera, blog posts, and other online resources. I use GitHub Copilot and Microsoft Copilot, so I have some familiarity with AI, but I need to know more about LLMs, how they work, how I can create my own, as well as other related topics.

As I mentioned, I already have a personal Pluralsight account, but I don’t mind paying, and I’ve had really good luck with Coursera courses in the past, so I included it.

That generated a good starting point, but I realized it was lacking, so I followed up with:

Can you also include any relevant github repositories that will help in my learning?

and then

Can you also include courses or documents on the topic of ethics in AI?

Once I was satisfied in the content that had been generated, I ended with this final prompt:

Can you combine all of that into a 3-week learning plan?

The Output

In the end, it produced a solid plan, although I did notice that some of the results from the previous prompts were NOT included in the final output. While I won’t drop the whole thing here, here is an overview. Each section included a good selection of courses, YouTube videos, Github repositories, documents, blog posts, as well as pointers for additional hands-on work.

Week 1: Foundations of AI & Machine Learning

Objective: Build a strong foundation in AI, machine learning concepts, and neural networks.

Week 2: Deep Dive into LLMs & Their Architecture

Objective: Understand the mechanics, training, and applications of LLMs.

Week 3: Building & Deploying Your Own LLM & AI Ethics

Objective: Create and deploy an AI model while understanding ethical considerations.

In Summary

I was very happy with the output of my chat with Microsoft Copilot. Is this a learning plan one of the self-appointed experts from social media would have provided? Probably not, but that’s okay. It works for me.

Want to learn something new, but aren’t sure where to start? Have Copilot give you a hand!

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