How to build AI systems in 2026? Google Brain co-founder shares three crucial tips

With artificial intelligence being the buzz word in the last few years, there has been a lot of hype around getting in the field. However, there is still usually an AI talent shortage which even led to the highly skilled professionals getting million dollar pay packages earlier in the year. AI pioneer and Coursera co-founder has now shared three tips for people who are looking to enter the highly enticing field to get skilled at creating AI systems.

Ng, who was among the co-founders of Google Brain and served as Chief Scientist at Baidu, says that ‘companies just can’t find enough skilled AI talent.’

Ng, who spends his winter holidays learning and building to sharpen his skills, advises aspiring developers to focus on a mix of structured learning, hands-on practice, and research.

Andrew Ng's 3 tips for building AI systems:

1) Take AI courses

Ng isn't in favour of the conventional advice that suggest people to "just plunge into building things" without learning the basics. He calls it ‘bad advice’ and says that going head first into building things without understanding the foundations of AI will risk "reinventing the wheel badly."

"I have spoken with developers who reinvented standard RAG document chunking strategies, duplicated existing evaluation techniques for Agentic AI, or ended up with messy LLM context management code," Ng explained.

He noted that structured learning helps developers understand ‘building blocks that already exist.’ and would lead to weeks of unecessary work being saved.

“Rather than watching Netflix, I prefer watching a course by a knowledgeable AI instructor any day!” he added

2) Practice building AI systems

Ng says that while courses are important, they alone aren't enough. He drew a parallel to how learning the theory behdin how an airplane works is important to becoming a pilot but no one has ever become a pilot just by taking courses.

“At some point, jumping into the pilot's seat is critical! The good news is that by learning to use highly agentic coders, the process of building is the easiest it has ever been” he noted

He also noted that if he is down on inspiration about what projects to work on, he usuall takes courses or reads research papers to end up with new ideas.

3) Read research papers

Ng's advice for those looking to stand out in the field is to read research papers. he notes that many of the "strongest candidates on the job market today" do so at least occasionally.

While admitting that papers can be "harder to digest" and sometimes feel like a "grind" compared to courses, he points out that they contain knowledge that hasn't yet been translated into easier formats.

"The flashes of insight I get from reading papers are delightful," Ng said.