On AI engineering and consulting with Andy Walters

I wanted to interview Andy after seeing his interview with Cory House and hearing that the AI industry is “like drinking water from a fire hose”.

See, recently I’ve started a small development shop in crypto called Leet Software and I’ve realized that the crypto market is not as hot as it was when I first started out in 2022. Work is not so easy to come by. And the data shows it too:

Note: I’m perfectly aware that VC money is not the best indicator of the health of an industry. But most of the work in crypto is found at startups. And if they don’t have VC money, there’s a good chance they don’t have any money at all. And no money means no work.

So all these combined made me think “what if I went into AI?”. I mean, why not?

Why not #1: I don’t know shit about AI

A fair reason. But after listening to Andy, researching and also following a lot of people on Twitter that are in AI, I think I’ve figured out what the key concepts to learn are.

Sure, I’ll never be a ML/AI researcher that gets picked up by OpenAI and builds the next ChatGPT. But I can most certainly figure out how to use the existent models, RAG, prompt engineering, vector databases and a few other things to build cool products and generate value.

It’s the same in crypto too. You don’t have to perfectly understand how to implement a blockchain to code good smart contracts and integrate them with frontends to create cool dApps.

Why not #2: You’re chasing trends

A combination of “you’re chasing trends”, fear of being a shiny object syndrome guy, fear of being an imposter and fear of AI not being so hot in the recent future like it happened for crypto.

Fair reasons as well.

From anecdotal experience including this interview with Andy, I feel like AI might have more real-world applications than crypto though. And it’s interesting to note that AI has had huge VC money dumped into it for years now, and not just for a 1-2 year bull market like crypto did.

To be clear, I’m not saying crypto is dead. It’s still amazing tech and very useful. I’m just saying “if you’re trying to find work and make money, it’s seemingly harder than AI”.

Now, should *I* go into AI? Should *you* go into AI? Not sure… But the interview with Andy was quite interesting and I’d give it a watch if I were you.