I spent last 12 years building CRUD apps. It pays the bills but I'm getting bored. Want to work on something more challenging and cutting edge. Is going to grad school for either MS or PhD the best route? I'm 34 years old. I want to work on self driving cars or someone equally cool. TC 140K
If you want to be a research scientist, having phd is almost a must. In case of the ML engineer, sometimes bachelor or master degree is enough, depending on your experience working on ML.
I'd say implement some of the algos from scratch to understand what the frameworks are doing to make your life easier. You'll thank yourself in the interviews
PhD isn't worth it unless you know exactly what field you wanna focus on. MS is definitely a good idea if you want brand recognition while gaining skills. You can also gain skills (online courses, side projects, reading papers from ArXiv etc) in a field like AI by yourself and try to get an interview at a smaller AI team to get in (startups / mid-sized companies)