To give context, the company I am interning for is a startup that also collaborates with a venture capitalist company. A venture capitalist company is a firm that invests in startups and emerging companies with potential for significant growth. The venture capitalist company that my internship is partnered with is specifically in the tech sector. The VC company that is investing in my particular startup ran a week-long pre-internship program during this week where our cohort participated in workshops and mini-sprint projects that focused on preparation for internships, personal and professional skill building, learning about sustainability and generative AI. Throughout all the sessions, we focused heavily on preparing for our upcoming internships, how to show up professionally, communication, and applying the tools we are learning/will learn to our internships as well as our daily lives. We were also introduced to speakers and encouraged to engage with our peers as much as possible during the week and throughout the internship.
During our combination of in-person and virtual meetings, our leaders encouraged us to be curious, ask questions, and to genuinely take in the learning experience from our internships. They expressed how to utilize SMART goals and define tangible measurable goals throughout the internship. We were also highly encouraged to learn about our company’s culture, and not to stress so much about being perfect. We were given a few different challenges during each workshop to complete and discuss such as, creating as a group an actionable plan for a company (whether existing or not) to incorporate sustainability principles.
One of the more hands-on projects that we were able to work on was with generative AI during this pre-internship program. We were able to learn how to create a custom chatbot using ChatGPT, and Vibe Coding. This was the project this week I enjoyed the most because I have never really used A.I. in that particular way before. I usually do not use it at all intentionally. Learning how to essentially create a learning assistant is very new to me, however I enjoyed this aspect of it. The prompt was to build a custom bot, define its purpose, customize the instructions and behavior, use it, test it, and refine it. I was able to create a chatbot that would come up with a speech therapy plan for the summer for my six-year-old. Even though this was a more personal and specific task, it was beneficial to do it this way because you are able to insert specific, personalized information. By doing this, it assists the bot in learning the instructions and behavior, and this in turn helps the user receive more accurate feedback and results. Being able to utilize this type of tool in relation to our industry is important because many of the companies we work for or will be working for in the future are already utilizing these tools. A generative A.I. can also be a helpful tool in assisting with tasks on the jobs themselves and creating better workflows.
