Getting started with ML

Hi everyone,

Looking at the rest of the topics in the beginners section, I’ll probably sound like and ultra noob, but I’m interested in getting into ML. Rather as a hobby at this point.

Tiny bit about myself: in my thirties, a bit geeky and the “local tech guy” at home and work (I work in finance). Obviously interested in AI, I used to hack and jailbreak consoles, phones etc. have played with some Linux distros, but generally don’t know any python etc.

The question is where do I start to dig a bit deeper in this world? I was able to use the Google colab space to run a couple of demos posted here, so maybe I’m not a completely clueless chicken running around blind. Are there good courses to start for beginners on machine learning? Udemy works good for me as I have free access through my employer.

I’d be grateful if any of yas find a couple of minutes to nudge me in the right direction. I did some research online already, but would appreciate input from someone who’s been through this route already.

Cheers, Jacek

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Depends on your interest area. I seem to have fallen into machine vision as i wanted to create AI to do image recognition. Took me 2 weeks of hard slog to find the code, build a simple machine learning environment in python, and then get it to work.

For machine vision, yolo ( ultralytics.com ) is simple and easy to use, having an objective will drive your study and research. Sometimes its as simple as " this particular problem really annoys me" so you set out to solve a problem. Start simple, get good with python installs and wrangling package versions etc. AI is mostly python.

I get annoyed with fan boy " connect to the internet to do everything" -mentality - i think if you cant get it running on a stand alone pc( after installs are done ) its too easy to use someone elses services and you’ll learn nothing.

Im building a stand alone ANPR system to unlock our garage at home , only when it sees only our car reg in the driveway. Its stand alone for security reasons ( not internet connected ), which means you have to do a complete install on a pc or nuc.

Some courses might be helpful, but hands on drives innovation and problem solving and is the best teacher. Pick a project and start learning…

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