As a first-year student, participating in a scholarship program introduced them to AI and ML workflows within the AWS ecosystem, changing their perspective on large scalable solutions.
The course they took through Udacity sponsored by AWS focused on AI programming with Python and included creating two projects to apply knowledge to real-world applications.
After completing the foundation course, they qualified for the Advanced Cohort: Machine Learning Fundamentals Nanodegree, where they used AWS services like Amazon SageMaker Studio and Amazon S3.
Working on cloud technologies like AWS opened up a new world of scalable AI and ML implementations, providing hands-on experience with real-time applications and a variety of development tools.
They embarked on projects like predicting bike sharing demand with AutoGluon using AWS SageMaker to gain insights and deep dive into SageMaker Studio.
Setting up SageMaker Studio involved creating users in the domain to manage notebooks and experiments, with tools like JupyterLab environment hosted on AWS infrastructure.
They worked on a capstone project for a logistics company using AWS cloud services, focusing on building an image classification model to optimize delivery efficiency.
Utilizing Step Functions and Lambda functions, they automated the pipeline for image classification, achieving 94% accuracy with checks for prediction reliability.
While exploring AutoML with Amazon SageMaker Canvas for a flower image classification model, they marveled at the no-code tool's intuitiveness for ML beginners.
The exposure to AWS services like S3, SageMaker Studio, AutoML, Lambda, Step Functions, and IAM Roles provided real-world experience in building and managing cloud-based AI systems.
Transitioning from a learner to a builder in their AI and ML journey, they emphasized the importance of curiosity, community support, and continuous experimentation.