In this article I would like to share my journey in the field of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, it will be useful for you if you want to start a career in Machine Learning / AI; the Do’s and Don’ts 🙂 at least from my experience.
I will be kinda brief 🤞…
I learnt Python in 2020, as a geek i get fascinated with anything tech and I always loved programming. As of that time I didn’t have any use case of python in my head — just wanted to look cool :).
When I heard of Machine Learning and AI I was really amazed about the kind of technology it is, this was about 2021, I would read about it and what its used cases were not understanding them indepth, I was really shallow with my intuition at that time. I knew the Field was broad but I didnt bother I wanted to know all at once, thinking it was possible 🙂, this was what was going on for months.
After couple of months, I then realized that I knew nothing, I wasn’t able to implement my knowledge in small tasks, the deepest I could go was linear Regression 😶🌫️ (like literally).
From that moment on i had to retrace my steps, here is what I did:
Find your Path.
I know it kind of a general thing to hear that you should find a specific path in a career then build on it, but i want to highlight that. Focus is one thing you get when you are not distracted, it is that simple. The field of ML / AI is really broad and before you can digest all that is in it (🥲 Thats not even thinkable at least from my perspective) you can get distracted. This is the starting point that helped me.
More Projects Less Tutorials.
Yes, less tutorials. I guess you are familiar with tutorial hell — its Real — I cannot overemphasize knowledge gained when I started working on projects. I mean yes, I did the popular Andrew Ng’s course (both of them) on Machine Learning, they have really helped me, also some other courses on simplilearn and Udemy but I didn’t dwell on them much I just focused more on my path. Once again, I know it said everywhere but I could not understand until it happened to me. At least for a start I don’t mean the next Google AI, you can start buy solving some problems around you that Machine Learning can help with, there is no harm in it rather you gain more experience. Kaggle can be a good place to start.
Real World Experience / Connections
Yup, dive into them as soon as possible, cause like learning a technology that you aren’t aware of how it is used practically doesn’t make sense. The real-world scenarios are more or less different from what you think, probably more complex than your usual linear Regression to predict stock prices or Neural Network for MNIST dataset, these examples or problems (if you call them that) are just like a foundation that you have to build on, it is now your ability to find the real-world scenarios and apply knowledge.
Yeah, that’s it. With this you can succeed in pretty much anything and any path you follow.
If you read up till this point. Thanks. I just want to give some bonus tips 😃:
Learning Never Ends
We as humans can’t know everything but we keep learning. In as much as you are to focus on a path, you can’t be certified to have known every single thing. you can become an expert, yeah, but you keep learning simply because the field keeps evolving. So, in order to continue learning I keep myself updated with the latest news and publishes to know what new and how that adds to my knowledge.
Attend Webinars / Events
One of the greatest things I have stumbled into is attending Webinars or AI /ML talks. You get an opportunity to connect with Industry Experts on your related paths, companies like DeepLearning.AI, FourthBrain.ai…. just to mention a few have wonderful webinars, even on YouTube. You can attend to gain knowledge from Expert in the field.
You can ask me anything in the comment section 🤝.
Thats all for now✌