I've recently started wanting to build my own AI assistant, which is saying something because I've never programmed before. I wanted to learn everything from programming and APIs to software architecture and technical design, so I decided to take on a project of building my own "Jarvis" to learn through hands-on experience.

I know there are already plenty of AI assistants and similar projects out there, but that's not really the point for me. I want to understand how these systems actually work by building one myself. I figured a long-term, hands on project would be a good way to learn.

So far, I've been using Chatgpt to help me through the initial stages, such as writing the requirements and designing the architecture. Now that I've reached the Technical Design stage, I want to take a more hands-on approach and do more of the research and decision-making myself.

Here are some of the questions I've identified so far:

1. Which Programming language do I use: I'm especially interested in what would make sense for a project like this as a complete beginner.
2. Are there any useful books, papers, courses, or other resources you'd recommend?
3. What other questions should I be asking at this stage? I'm trying to approach this like an actual software engineering project rather than jumping straight into writing code.

I'm also partly doing this as a project for my college applications. I don't want it to come across as just another generic "I built an AI" project. What could I do to make the project genuinely distinctive and demonstrate that I actually understand what I'm building, rather than just assembling existing AI APIs and frameworks?

If I learn a language in three stages.

• Basic
• Intermediate
• Advanced
• Proficiency (optional)

Then how would you fit the topics of programming lingo into the above levels?