Is It Worth Learning AI/ML as a Backend Developer?

I'd recommend checking in with your team leader about this. They can provide insights on whether diving into AI/ML is beneficial for your career development.

Even if it's not required for your job, it wouldn't hurt to learn the basics of AI/ML. Understanding key concepts can enhance your skills and make your coding more efficient. There are great resources like 'Practical Statistics for Data Scientists' by Peter and Andrew Bruce and 'Hands-On Machine Learning' by Aurélien Géron to get you started.

Honestly, as a backend developer, you're likely going to be interacting with third-party APIs rather than developing your own models. I suggest starting with how to run and integrate existing models into your projects. That should be your priority!

Absolutely, ML Operations is the way to go! This area focuses on maintaining and deploying machine learning models, which is becoming more essential as companies use AI more. Familiarizing yourself with this can make you a valuable asset.

If AI/ML isn't part of your job description, you probably don't need to dive deep into it. Basic programming skills mixed with some knowledge of probability and statistics will go a long way for a backend developer. Focus more on understanding how to connect existing models instead of training them from scratch.