A former AI developer trainee shares a 30-year journey from early hopes to late success and retirement.
The story starts in the 1980s with a high schooler dreaming of AI, inspired by sci-fi hits like Terminator and Star Trek. Coding BASIC and Pascal, they even built a hydrogen atom orbital visualizer, earning a scholarship to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
At RPI, the AI reality hit hard. Their professor assigned a solitaire game in LISP with no real learning—just coding every move. This "Second AI Winter" deflated early AI hopes. 
After college, the AI dream was shelved. The developer turned to IT infrastructure, automating network monitoring by writing tools to compete with costly commercial software. But the real spark came around 2015, when "Big Data" concepts clicked, inspiring them to build a tool connecting disparate system data, answering nagging network questions with a click.
Desiring more, they dove into data science and machine learning classes, rebuilding sales forecast models with R and Python, using AutoML and SHAP, and dockerizing solutions integrated into dashboards.
In 2019, AI spring arrived. When tasked with helping a consumer service team identify products via images, they bypassed pricey AI vendors. Instead, they built their own image classifier, spun up a Linux GPU instance on Azure, and built a web interface. A quick demo convinced leadership to scrap third-party deals.
Their AI project flourished over six years, winning company accolades and reigniting childhood dreams without dystopian tech.
This year, the developer plans retirement but calls it a reset, urging others to keep learning, pivot fearlessly, and nurture mentor ties.
On their last day, they shared this advice:
Don’t be afraid to step back and assess what truly makes you happy. It may take time and effort to pivot, but it’s worth pursuing.
Be sure to forge good relationships with your mentors and managers, they may be the ones to help open doors for you.
Never stop learning. You don’t know where you next inspiration will come from.
The journey proves you’re never too old to chase AI dreams—even if it takes decades.
Image source: Wikimedia Commons
