We all start somewhere

With your experience, you’re already coming from the right direction. I’d treat AI like another engineering layer rather than just a collection of tools. Start with local models, RAG, embeddings, and evaluation. Build practical things like a private coding assistant or a knowledge base over your own projects. Fine-tuning can come later once you understand where prompting and retrieval stop being enough. The field is moving quickly, but solid software engineering skills are still the foundation.