Not American style, as I’m in EU and we have more chill there. So probably you should take my advice with some filter of the country you are currently in. First of all: why ML? Are you really curious about it, or is it only the “following market trends” stuff? If the later, then please remember, that there is soo much of different opportunities even in the current AI field, that everyone on every level will find own niche. But let’s assume you are curious and there my advice would be: look for all different areas of ML, check them, try them and maybe you will find something that will “click” at some point. But first of all, start with basics from Kaggle (their tutorials are really nice). Check tutorials on the hugginface. Build your basics in types of ML areas, types of learning, how networks works etc. That is a foundation you will always use in any research area. Then think about your hobbies, anything that you like and try to find if there’s anyone that already did ML research on the cross line of both worlds. When you will have any specific areas, you can just write to the people that works on them. In ML industry there is a lot of awesome people that are crazy happy whevener someone will ask them for some specifics of their work. And from the beginning of this adventure, test your ideas. Run the code, run models, do a tutorials, build experience. So layer you will find it much easier to change expertise area. Or you can try some research programs, but they are country specific (even region specific in most cases) so you would need to have someone in the place you are now. From my experience in the EU, even for a basic research teams/programs you need to know some stuff already, and be experienced with running stuff.