ML/AI and Digital Marketing

M28, studied Economics in school, have 5 years of experience in Digital Marketing, and have a good grasp of Python.

More and more, I see that my full time job in Digital Advertising is becoming automated due to Machine Learning on platforms like Meta/Google. I'm concerned that in the long run I won't be very valuable. Advertising is already a mid-paying career as is.

My thought is to learn about machine learning/AI for the first half of this year and then create a side project to showcase to future employers.

My questions are:

• How should I learn about ML/AI? Is Andrew Ng's Coursera course a good place to start?
  • I often feel that with courses I struggle to retain the information as I don't use it. Should I start a side project before or after completing a course? Also thought about creating a newsletter just so I can distill the learnings.
• 10 years from now, how valuable will knowing AI/ML be? Will the AI/ML systems get so advanced that human intervention is not needed and therefore isn't a skill to invest in? Should I instead invest in a creative skill set?