I think pg answered the question as “what I’d do as a project” and not “what I’d do as a career.” So the critical comments are kind of missing the point, IMO.

I don’t see why learning how LLMs work is a bad project for a 17 year old.

Optimizing your entire career and the next decade+ of your life on LLMs? Yeah, probably not ideal. It’s almost always a bad idea to make long term decisions based on current trendy things.

And since everyone is using this topic to give their ideal advice to 17 year olds, my advice as a mid-30s guy: seriously consider becoming highly skilled at a specific thing, and don’t be scared off by the idea that it’ll take 5-10-15 years to get there.

When you’re 17-25, the timescale of a decade seems infinite. But it’s really not, and a decade spent “exploring and keeping your options open” sometimes just ends up with you being pretty decent but not amazing at a lot of random things.

Sometimes I wish I had just become a carpenter, chef, electrician, etc. – a specific skill set that leads to mastery over time, rather than the endless exciting-new-thing hamster wheel of working in tech.