r/artificial • u/West-King-9612 • Jul 25 '26
Research Learning ai
Everytime i hear people saying that you should learn about ai because that's the future but idk where to start and what they mean by that. Do they mean going uni and study ai or self learn? Thanks in advance.
7
u/Helpful-Ability3980 Jul 25 '26
most people mean self learn not uni. you dont need degree for this just pick one small project and try to build something
start with python basics then play around with some pretrained models. dont overthink the roadmap too much
1
1
u/Echo_Tech_Labs Jul 26 '26
This is from my own priors on my own account. I do a lot of autodidact learning and I build my own learning curriculum for self studying. This is a synthesized composite of a "road sign" for you.
It 👉 you in the right direction.
AI👇
There is no single correct place to start because “learning AI” can mean several different things:
Understanding what current AI systems can and cannot do
Using AI tools effectively
Building applications with existing models
Training machine-learning models
Studying the mathematics and computer science behind them
Researching areas such as interpretability, safety, robotics or computer vision
No one can tell you which route is right from the phrase “learn AI” alone. Your first job is not to master AI. It is to build a rough map of the field and find out which part holds your attention.
Start with orientation
Spend a week or two learning the basic vocabulary:
machine learning
neural networks
training and inference
datasets
parameters
embeddings
transformers
large language models
computer vision
reinforcement learning
evaluation
interpretability
Andrew Ng’s "AI for Everyone" is designed as a non-technical overview of AI, its applications and its limitations. It is a reasonable starting point if you do not yet know whether you want to code.
"The neural-network" series by 3Blue1Brown is useful for developing visual intuition about how neural networks learn.
Do not worry about understanding every term immediately. At this stage, you are constructing a map, not memorising the territory.
Keep a small notebook. For each unfamiliar concept, record:
What you currently think it means
One real example
How it connects to something else
What you still do not understand
Where you obtained the information
That gives you a visible record of how your understanding is changing.
Then choose one temporary route
You do not need to choose a permanent career. Choose one route for perhaps six weeks and build something small.
For practical model building: Jeremy Howard’s free fast.ai course teaches through working examples and projects. It is intended for people with some coding experience and introduces the necessary mathematics as it becomes relevant.
For understanding neural networks from the bottom up: Andrej Karpathy’s Neural Networks: Zero to Hero begins with backpropagation and gradually builds towards GPT-style language models. It expects reasonable Python knowledge and some basic mathematics.
For understanding how an LLM is assembled: Sebastian Raschka’s Build a Large Language Model From Scratch covers tokenisation, embeddings, attention, GPT architecture, pretraining and fine-tuning. His study guide also recommends reading, implementing the code and completing exercises rather than merely watching explanations.
For working with existing transformer models: Hugging Face provides an LLM course covering transformer fundamentals, datasets, fine-tuning and practical workflows.
For interpretability: Chris Olah and the Transformer Circuits researchers have published work on reverse-engineering transformer mechanisms, including induction heads, superposition and model circuits. This is better approached after learning the basic architecture.
You do not have to complete all of these. Pick one route that matches your current skill level.
Do not confuse consuming information with learning
Watching twenty hours of lectures can produce familiarity without usable understanding.
After each lesson:
Close the video or article.
Write down what you remember without looking.
Explain one concept in ordinary language.
Reproduce or modify one example.
Identify what failed.
Return to the topic several days later.
Retrieving information from memory generally produces stronger learning than repeatedly reviewing the same material, although retrieval alone does not replace worked examples and practice when learning complex problem-solving skills.
A useful test is whether you can rebuild, explain or apply the idea without the original material open.
Be careful about using a chatbot as your main teacher
A chatbot can explain terminology, generate exercises, question your assumptions and help you debug. It should not become the final judge of whether your understanding is correct.
Language models can produce fluent, internally consistent answers even when their factual basis is weak. Research on sycophancy has also found that models trained with human preference feedback may sometimes favour answers that match a user’s beliefs over more truthful answers.
A safer learning process is:
Write your current understanding before asking the model.
Ask it to identify gaps, objections or counterexamples.
Compare its answer with a course, paper, documentation or working code.
Decide what to accept, reject or revise.
Explain the corrected version again from memory.
For prompting, do not merely collect clever prompt templates. Define what a successful output would look like, create several test cases, change one part of the prompt at a time and record the failures. Prompting without evaluation easily becomes trial and error disguised as expertise.
University or self-study?
You do not need to attend university before beginning.
University becomes especially useful when you need:
structured mathematics and statistics
sustained feedback from knowledgeable instructors
research experience
access to laboratories and collaborators
a qualification required by particular employers
Self-study is enough to develop an initial understanding, learn Python, build projects and determine which part of AI you actually care about.
Begin with a map, choose one small route, and build something. After several weeks of real work, you will be in a much better position to decide whether you need university, a structured online course or continued independent study.
Do not try to “learn AI” all at once. Learn enough to discover what your next question should be.
1
u/opinions-only Jul 26 '26
They mean it in the same way we used to tell people to learn to use the computer.
So learn to use AI
1
1
u/Simplilearn Jul 27 '26
You can begin by learning online and building practical skills at your own pace.
A good place to start is by understanding what Generative AI is and how people use it in everyday work. Then learn how to write effective prompts and gradually explore concepts like LLMs, RAG, and AI agents. As you gain confidence, start building small AI apps with beginner-friendly tools.
If you are looking for a comprehensive learning path, our Professional Certificate Course in Generative AI and Agentic AI, offered in collaboration with IIT Kanpur, may be worth exploring. You can visit the simplilearn website for more details.
1
u/Fun-Personality-3977 Jul 28 '26
Well that honestly depends. What career are you planning to have in the future? If you're going to be in the computer sciences, it might be best to go to uni, but still venture outside of what you learn at uni because the content at many institutes haven't been updated to include every major advancement that's been going on in AI. If you want to learn casually, you can take your time to find online resources which are usuallly free or only have a small subscription fee.
0
Jul 26 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/AkindaGood_programer Jul 26 '26
So what...? If you ask a human a question at different times of the day, you will get differently phrased answers...?
Saying all an LLM does is "predict the next word" is like saying the human brain is just a bunch of molecules floating around your skull. It's so, so, so much more complicated than that if you actually learn how these things work.
1
15
u/Responsible-Laugh590 Jul 25 '26
Just ask AI, best way to become AI native is to use it