AI Full-Stack Engineering Roadmap

Phase 1: Foundations (Core Math & Basics) [6-8 Months]

Mathematics:

- Linear Algebra Done Right by Sheldon Axler

- Introduction to Linear Algebra by Gilbert Strang

Calculus:

- Calculus: Early Transcendentals by James Stewart

- Advanced Calculus by Patrick M. Fitzpatrick

Probability and Statistics:

- Probability and Statistics for Engineers and Scientists by Sheldon Ross

- All of Statistics: A Concise Course in Statistical Inference by Larry Wasserman

Optimization:

- Convex Optimization by Stephen Boyd and Lieven Vandenberghe

Phase 2: Machine Learning Core [4-6 Months]

Books:

- An Introduction to Statistical Learning by Gareth James et al.

- Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning by Christopher Bishop

Advanced:

- The Elements of Statistical Learning by Hastie, Tibshirani, and Friedman

Phase 3: Deep Learning (with Generative Models Focus) [6-8 Months]

 AI Full-Stack Engineering Roadmap

Books:

- Deep Learning by Ian Goodfellow et al.

- Neural Networks and Deep Learning by Michael Nielsen

Generative AI Basics:

- Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs): GANs in Action by Jakub Langr

- Variational Autoencoders (VAEs): Read Kingma and Welling's Auto-Encoding Variational Bayes

- Diffusion Models: Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models by Ho et al.

Phase 4: Transformers and LLMs [6-8 Months]

Books and Papers:

- Attention Is All You Need by Vaswani et al.

- Transformers for Natural Language Processing by Denis Rothman

LLMs:

- Language Models are Few-Shot Learners by Brown et al.

Phase 5: Generative AI Applications [4-6 Months]

Applications:

- Text-to-Image: DALL-E, Stable Diffusion

- Text-to-Video: Runway ML, Phenaki

- Generative Audio: Jukebox: A Generative Model for Music

Phase 6: AI Agents (Autonomous Systems) [4-6 Months]

Books:
 AI Full-Stack Engineering Roadmap

- Multiagent Systems by Shoham and Leyton-Brown

- Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction by Sutton and Barto

Advanced Techniques:

- AutoGPT, BabyAGI, and LangChain for building conversational agents.

Phase 7: MLOps for Generative AI and AI Agents [3-4 Months]

Topics:

- Serving Models: Docker, Kubernetes

- Deployment: FastAPI, TorchServe

Phase 8: Specialized Topics [3-4 Months]

AI Ethics:

- Ethics of AI and Robotics by Vincent Müller

Advanced Research:

- Read papers from NeurIPS, CVPR, and ICLR.

Resources for Practice

- Kaggle & Hugging Face Datasets

- Papers with Code

- OpenAI Gym & RLBench

- AI-related hackathons (e.g., Stanford AI competitions)

 Claude ai /learning pace 20/25 hours a week

AI Engineering Learning Roadmap

Part 1: Mathematical Foundations
Linear Algebra
1. “Linear Algebra and Its Applications” by Gilbert Strang
• Core concepts: vectors, matrices, eigenvalues
• Practice: Complete MIT OCW 18.06 problem sets
2. “Linear Algebra Done Right” by Sheldon Axler
• For deeper theoretical understanding
• Focus on chapters 1-7 initially

Calculus & Optimization

1. “Calculus” by James Stewart
• Essential multivariate calculus
• Practice: Odd-numbered exercises
2. “Convex Optimization” by Stephen Boyd and Lieven Vandenberghe
• Foundation for ML optimization
• Use Stanford’s course problems (available online)

Probability & Statistics

1. “Introduction to Probability” by Bertsekas and Tsitsiklis
• Fundamental probability theory
• MIT OCW 6.041 assignments
2. “Statistical Inference” by Casella and Berger
• Advanced statistical concepts
• Focus on chapters 1-9

Part 2: Machine Learning Foundations

Classical Machine Learning
1. “Introduction to Statistical Learning” by James, Witten, Hastie, and Tib-
shirani
• Basic ML concepts
• R-based exercises (convert to Python for practice)
2. “Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning” by Christopher Bishop
• Deeper ML theory
• Implement algorithms from scratch
3. “Elements of Statistical Learning” by Hastie, Tibshirani, and Friedman
• Advanced ML concepts
• Stanford’s STATS 315A problems

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Deep Learning
1. “Deep Learning” by Goodfellow, Bengio, and Courville
• Comprehensive DL theory
• Implementation exercises from deeplearningbook.org
2. “Neural Networks and Deep Learning” by Michael Nielsen
• Available online
• Code your own neural net from scratch

Part 3: Advanced Topics

Natural Language Processing
1. “Speech and Language Processing” by Jurafsky and Martin
• NLP fundamentals
• Stanford’s CS224N assignments
2. “Natural Language Processing with Transformers” by Lewis et al.
• Modern NLP architectures
• Implement key papers from scratch

Reinforcement Learning
1. “Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction” by Sutton and Barto
• RL foundations
• David Silver’s course assignments
2. “Algorithms for Reinforcement Learning” by Szepesvári
• Advanced RL theory
• OpenAI Gym implementations

Large Language Models

1. “Mathematics of Big Data and Machine Learning” by Kepner and Janan-
than
• Scaling considerations
2. “Designing Machine Learning Systems” by Chip Huyen
• Production ML systems
• Real-world case studies

Practice Resources
1. Papers with Code (paperswithcode.com)
• Implement key papers from scratch
• Focus on foundational papers first
2. Kaggle Competitions
• Start with getting-started competitions
• Progress to featured competitions
• Focus on implementing papers, not just using libraries

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 3. Research Paper Implementations
• Transformer paper (Attention is All You Need)
• BERT, GPT papers
• ResNet, VGG papers
• Write your own training loops
4. Open Source Contributions
• Study PyTorch codebase
• Contribute to Hugging Face
• Understand FastAI implementations

Reading Strategy
1. For each book:
• First pass: Read chapters and do basic exercises
• Second pass: Implement all algorithms from scratch
• Third pass: Connect concepts across books
• Create your own synthesis notes
2. Implementation Practice:
• Never copy code
• Implement everything from mathematical formulas
• Write extensive tests
• Document your understanding
• Compare with existing implementations
3. Validation Strategy:
• Solve previous years’ ML conference problems
• Participate in ML paper reading groups
• Blog about implementations
• Create teaching materials

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AI Engineering Learning Path
A Comprehensive Guide from Foundation to Expertise
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Learning Timeline Overview
3. Core Curriculum
4. Implementation Strategy
5. Timeline Optimization
6. Resources and References

1. Introduction
This document outlines a comprehensive learning path for becoming an expert
AI engineer, specifically designed for students with strong mathematical foun-
dations (BAC 18/20 level). The curriculum emphasizes fundamental under-
standing over surface-level tutorials and focuses on book-based learning for deep
comprehension.

2. Learning Timeline Overview

Total Expected Duration: 3-4 years Recommended Study Pace: 20-25
hours/week

Timeline Breakdown:
• Mathematical Foundations: 6-8 months
• Machine Learning Foundations: 8-10 months
• Advanced Topics: 10-12 months
• Generative AI & Modern Architectures: 8-10 months
• AI Agents & Recent Technologies: 6-8 months

3. Core Curriculum
Phase 1: Mathematical Foundations (6-8 months)
Linear Algebra
• Primary Text: “Linear Algebra and Its Applications” - Gilbert Strang
• Secondary Text: “Linear Algebra Done Right” - Sheldon Axler
• Practice: MIT OCW 18.06 problem sets

Calculus & Optimization

• Primary Text: “Calculus” - James Stewart
• Advanced Text: “Convex Optimization” - Boyd and Vandenberghe
• Practice: Stanford’s course problems

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Probability & Statistics
• Primary Text: “Introduction to Probability” - Bertsekas and Tsitsiklis
• Advanced Text: “Statistical Inference” - Casella and Berger
• Practice: MIT OCW 6.041 assignments

Phase 2: Machine Learning Foundations (8-10 months)

Classical Machine Learning
• “Introduction to Statistical Learning” - James, Witten, Hastie, Tibshirani
• “Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning” - Christopher Bishop
• “Elements of Statistical Learning” - Hastie, Tibshirani, Friedman

Deep Learning
• “Deep Learning” - Goodfellow, Bengio, Courville
• “Neural Networks and Deep Learning” - Michael Nielsen

Phase 3: Advanced Topics (10-12 months)

Natural Language Processing
• “Speech and Language Processing” - Jurafsky and Martin
• “Natural Language Processing with Transformers” - Lewis et al.

Reinforcement Learning
• “Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction” - Sutton and Barto
• “Algorithms for Reinforcement Learning” - Szepesvári

Phase 4: Generative AI & Modern Architectures (8-10 months)

Generative Models
• “Probabilistic Graphical Models” - Koller and Friedman
• “Deep Generative Modeling” - Babuschkin and Simonyan
• “Diffusion Models in Vision: A Survey” - Yang et al.

Multimodal Systems
• “Multimodal Machine Learning” - Morency
• “Multimodal Deep Learning” - Baltrusaitis et al.

Phase 5: AI Agents & Recent Technologies (6-8 months)

AI Agents
• “Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach” - Russell and Norvig
• “Multi-Agent Machine Learning” - Schwartz
• “Building Autonomous Learners” - Barto et al.

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Modern Architectures
• Transformer architectures and scaling laws
• Neural scaling and efficient training
• Emerging architectures (MoE, State Space Models)

4. Implementation Strategy
Continuous Practice
• Implement algorithms from scratch
• Build complete systems
• Contribute to open source projects

Project Portfolio Development

• Classical ML implementations
• Deep learning architectures
• Generative models
• Agent systems
• Production-ready applications

Tools and Frameworks

• Primary: PyTorch, JAX
• Production: TensorFlow
• Agent Frameworks: LangChain, LlamaIndex

5. Timeline Optimization
Acceleration Strategies
• Parallel learning of related topics
• Implementation while studying theory
• Active project building
• Regular paper implementations

Progress Tracking
• Implementation milestones
• Project completion
• Paper reproductions
• Open source contributions

6. Resources and References

Online Platforms
• Papers with Code

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 • arXiv
• GitHub
• Kaggle

Academic Resources
• University course materials
• Research papers
• Conference proceedings

Community Engagement
• ML paper reading groups
• Open source communities
• Research forums
• Academic conferences

Note: This curriculum assumes dedication to deep understanding and imple-

mentation. The timeline can be adjusted based on prior experience and study
intensity.
The field of AI is rapidly evolving - stay current with latest developments
through: * Research papers * Conference proceedings * Implementation of new
architectures * Community engagement
Regular revision of this learning path is recommended to incorporate new de-
velopments in the field.