Work with me
I take on AI product development and offer teaching for people who want to build with AI or use it in their work.
Building an AI product
If you’d like to build a product with AI, we’ll start by figuring out what you need from it and what you’d expect from using it. Then we’ll work out what the first version should look like and test whether it can cover all of your requirements. This is usually a small version, such that it’s simple to examine in detail before committing to building it. If the AI adds little value to the product,
I’ll recommend you go with a simpler form of software.
The work I will do includes:
- Building the interface and the frontend
- Writing the backend logic for the application
- Integrating the AI model, fine-tuning it for the domain and the purpose of the application
- Setting up the data and organisation of tools used by the application.
We then start testing. Testing covers whether the responses are of good enough quality, whether the work takes too long, and whether it’s too expensive to run at the expected scale. Deployment and documentation is included as well. This can be a product in its own right, an internal tool, or a feature of an application. If better software can be built without AI, I’ll let you know.
Working on an existing product
If you already have a prototype or an application in use, We can start by looking at what it does and where it falls short.
We may need to change how the model gets its information or give the person using the product a better way to check and correct an answer. I also look at how the output is being tested, since we need to know whether a change has improved it.
I’ll need to review the code before estimating the changes. I can work on applications built with AI coding tools understand evaluation parameters.
Learning to build with AI
If you’d like to build something with AI, but you’re not sure where to start, bring me the idea for an application or project that’s stuck, and we’ll work through it together.
We’ll work on breaking up the work, telling the tool what we’d like it to do, reading and checking the code it produces, debugging it, and developing enough understanding of the process so that you know where to go to continue without help.
We’ll start from whatever level of programming experience. We’ll spend time on something you haven’t learned yet. I want you to understand the application well enough to keep working on it yourself.
Using AI at work
If you’re using AI at work, or are thinking about using it, we can start by looking at what work you’re trying to do and what aspects you are trying to improve by using AI.
My initial approach may be to try out the task in order to examine the result. We can work together to decide what information you’d like to share with the tool, whether it should ask the user to check responses, and how long it should take to correct any errors in the response. I can run workshops for individuals or teams, and these may not involve a need to write any code at all.
Scope, fees, and support
We don’t need anything in the form of a detailed specification. Just describe what you’re trying to do and what you’ve already tried. Then we can work out the best way forward and agree on a scope, the deliverables, the fee, and the timescale that we’ll work towards. For development, we also agree on the handover to your team and on continuing support after launch.
For development projects, we’ll also agree on the handover and any support after launch. That includes who will operate the application and what they’ll need to maintain it.