Question: How long does it take to study AI before you can create/program one yourself?

Carl Peter Robinson answered on 25 Jan 2024:

It depends. To create an AI model, you need to have an understanding of machine learning (ML) and a programming language, normally Python, which is the most popular choice at the moment.

There are some really good websites and books that explain machine learning and guide you through the process of developing a process that prepares some data, builds an ML model, trains that model with the data and displays results.

You could just literally get some code up and running that creates an ML model that produces results in under a day, by copying and pasting code you can find online, or by asking ChatGPT.

But I like your question because you ask about studying. I agree, it’s much better to learn and understand how to do these things, so that you are better equipped to fix any problems that might occur, or create new types of model or system using the knowledge you learn about model architectures and processing data.

It took me about a month to effectively develop and a program machine learning system, including setting up the GPU hardware on the PC. It took me a few more months to better understand the machine learning code I was developing. I did it by doing a lot of programming, some reading, talking to my peers and PhD supervisor, and watching Andrew Ng’s machine learning course online (highly recommended).
It took me much longer (the four years of my PhD) to understand the theory behind some of these systems and to appreciate what was going on “under the hood”. And there are always new model architectures and systems coming out to try to understand.

The thing is there are so many things you can learn about machine learning. I often go back to topics I’ve learned before and always find some new piece of knowledge or gain a better understanding of them.

It also depends on how you learn, as in what is the best learning method that will enable you to understand and absorb the required knowledge. Some people learn best from online videos or TV documentaries. Other people learn better by reading books, articles, or webpages. I still think there’s something to be gained by having interaction during the learning process with a human being who has knowledge of the subject. Or, as is being explored for the future, using AI chatbot tools to engage with in education. I also think we learn quicker by undertaking practical work, writing code, training a model, fixing bugs, just basically programming, programming, programming.