I’ve spent the last few weeks diving into Google’s AI Studio, NotebookLM, Vertex AI Agent Builder, and various other AI-related tools from Google and other companies. A developer friend has helped me a lot. I was aware of some of these technologies from reading about AI and LLMs in general, but now that I’m trying to use them to create solutions for my personal project, my understanding of them has gone much deeper.

I have a clear idea of what I want the technology to do. I’m trying to figure out if it can specifically do what I want. If so, what are all the ways? What are the implications of each option? What I learn sticks in my memory. This is different from my normal approach of poking around to understand a tool’s general capabilities, which doesn’t result in good retention.

I’ve also noticed that when I seek help from technically oriented people to learn new technologies, describing the problem and how I want to solve it helps tremendously. It gives them a better idea of where to start, and the conversation is more focused on solutions to my problem than on a broad overview of the technology.

I’m not sure which, if any, of these technologies will be part of the solutions I build. But I’ve learned something: If I have a problem I’m excited to solve, I should try using new technologies to create a solution. Worst case, I’ll gain a better understanding of the technologies. Best case, I understand the technologies better and create a solution to my problem.