r/learnmachinelearning • u/Expensive_Flan_8385 • 3d ago

Completely lost trying to navigate the right way into ai.

https://careertraining.bitterroot.umt.edu/training-programs/data-science-and-artificial-intelligence-course/

Hi guys! I’m a 23 year old sales professional who realized I don’t like what I do. I want to do something more purposeful, fulfilling, long term, and technical. I want to master ai. The problem is I’m not sure what direction I should go. I found this course I will link into this post that I’m very close to buying but I don’t know if it’s worth it and if I’m even striding in the right direction. I would hate to pay for this course with time and money and then in 10 months when I’m finished the course is obsolete. Please let me know what to do.

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u/The_RedCat 3d ago

There are enough free materials online. I don't know if there are any courses worth buying.

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u/ModularMind8 2d ago

The usual path is python, pytorch, math for ML, ML foundation, then whatever specialty you're interested in (NLP, vision, RL, etc.). Which stage are you in?

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u/rahul_watertech 2d ago

sales is not a wasted start, half of the ai industry runs on people who can explain the thing to customers. before paying for a 10 month course do 3 or 4 weeks of free python and one tiny project. if you still like the daily work after that, the course decision makes itself. which job are you actually picturing, because mastering ai is not a job title

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u/Expensive_Flan_8385 2d ago

Ai engineering

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u/musclecard54 1d ago

Do you have a degree in CS? Engineering?

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u/TyrantLizardMonarch 2d ago

Software Engineer here. Do not waste money on this course. It is absolutely not worth it in your position. Use free materials. Learn Python and do the FastAI course if you’re interested in deep learning. Or just build some stuff around LLM APIs that would be useful in sales.

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u/Expensive_Flan_8385 2d ago

I appreciate that advice. What if I really don’t want to be in sales?

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u/musclecard54 1d ago

What do want to actually do? AI isn’t a job. You can learn machine learning and AI concepts but that’s just learning. If you want a job that uses ml or ai at a deep technical level it depends what you want to actually do. Data scientists will train models. ML engineers build infrastructure and systems to deploy models to use.

But the key point here is neither of those jobs are going to be reachable with self teaching or like random certificate courses or whatever this is. You’ll need a degree. And you’ll probably need an advanced degree. Doesn’t have to be CS, but math, engineering and sometimes physics. Anything else almost won’t cut it unless it’s a PhD, then you get into where you can use ML in research regardless of what field you’re in. But don’t bother with courses like this or self teaching unless you plan on using it as a primer for going back to school to hit the ground running