Transitioning to AI with no STEM foundation?

TLDR
I have no STEM foundation but I’m looking to work with AI.
What steps do I need to take to quickly build a sturdy STEM foundation and become a competitive prospect working with AI?
*I’ve just turned 22 years old, I’m based in London, and I’m willing to learn on the fly.

Any advice or opportunities are welcome.

Background Information
I am a recent graduate with a degree in philosophy looking to jump ship to a career working with AI.

My undergraduate dissertation was a philosophical analysis of the use of adversarial networks in the art industry, e.g., Ahmed Elgammal’s AICAN (Artificial Intelligence Creative Adversarial Network)—While researching for my dissertation, I decided that I want AI to feature in my career aspirations.

I haven’t worked with computers, code, data, or mathematics since 2018, and my understanding of these things is rather rudimentary. Having studied logic via philosophy, I can write in pseudocode and can derive meaning from high-level programming languages.

Currently, I am signed up for the “AI for Everyone” course by DeepLearning.AI as well as a more technical IT-support course by Google which will give me the basic technical skills to succeed in an entry-level IT job. I’m also looking to brush up on my mathematical literacy and learn to code in Python in the coming months.

“Quickly” is not really feasible. It takes time to gain the necessary background skills for machine learning.

  • You’re going to need math skills including linear algebra, and some basic statistics.

  • Some familiarity with calculus is helpful - it’s fundamental to how the optimum solutions to machine learning models are found.

  • You need computer programming skills. Start with Python and take some tutorial courses.

Then you’ll have the knowledge to start taking courses in machine learning.

1 Like

Hi @Josh_Tang,

Want to make a calulator with Python? The idea is it lets user input something like this 1+2+10*(8-3+7*6/2+(3*8)) and it returns 503.

We can work on this together. I will break it down into a few steps. We can discuss here. However, I also want to finish this quickly (in a month), so whether we can finish it depends on you. You will have a finished project if we can finish it, or some experience if we cannot.

Cheers,
Raymond

1 Like

Understood. Thank you.
This has given me a place to start and reference with which to prioritize my goals.
I will try to be patient, but I understand this will take time. I’m not expecting immediate results, I think it will take at least three or four years of consistent work to attain the type of level I’m looking for.