Should I move from web development into machine learning?

Be careful to distinguish interest in machine learning from interest in the current AI and large-language-model hype. Look into the field beyond the latest trends and see whether the fundamentals—math, statistics, data cleaning, experimentation, and model evaluation—still appeal to you. The market is competitive and the field will keep changing, so genuine interest matters.

Getting a web development job first could be useful, but don't assume it will automatically lead to machine learning. Once you're established in a role, time, income, and job security can make a later pivot difficult. If you choose web development, keep a concrete ML study plan and consider targeting projects where both skill sets are relevant.

If machine learning genuinely interests you more, it may be better to start exploring it now rather than committing to a web development career you already expect to leave. Your web skills aren't wasted either—they can help you build interfaces and complete applications around your models. Just expect the transition to take significant time and study.

You don't necessarily have to choose one immediately. Web development can provide income while you learn machine learning, and the combination is useful for building complete products. A practical plan could be to keep improving your web skills while taking structured courses in Python, math, statistics, and introductory machine learning. Depending on the role, advanced ML positions may also require a university degree or graduate study.

Your current experience is probably less extensive than you think if it only includes basic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, so this is a reasonable time to change direction if you want to. On the other hand, machine learning is not just training impressive models—it often involves tedious data preparation, analysis, and debugging. Try a few small classification or regression projects before making a full commitment.