Career Switch · From my video notes
From law to AI builder: the list I point switchers to.
The list behind my video on leaving law for AI. Paid programs that hire switchers, open research communities, and the free courses I point lawyers and other non-CS professionals to. The full cost-checked version lives in this library's Switching into AI guide.
By Koki · October 2026
The list
Start with one paid application and one free course. Momentum beats planning.
OpenAI Residency
Six months as a full-time OpenAI employee at about $18,300 a month, embedded in a research team in San Francisco. Built for people coming from math, physics, engineering or self-taught paths.
Fellowship · PaidAnthropic Fellows Program
Four months of full-time research with an Anthropic mentor, a weekly stipend of $3,850 and around $15k a month in compute funding. Rolling applications; fellows work in Berkeley or London.
Research apprenticeship · PaidCohere Labs Scholars Program
A remote-first, full-time paid research apprenticeship pairing newcomers with Cohere Labs mentors and large-scale experiments. Deliberately open to people who have not published ML papers yet.
Apprenticeship · StipendAI Singapore AIAP
Singapore's national apprenticeship: 6 or 9 months full-time on real industry projects, a monthly stipend of SGD 4,000, and over 90% of graduates placed in AI roles within six months. Singapore citizens only.
Community · FreeML Collective
A nonprofit research community that works as a research home for people outside institutions: open talks, study groups, office hours and collaborators. Free to join.
Free coursefast.ai · Practical Deep Learning for Coders
The top-down course that turned a generation of programmers into deep learning practitioners. Videos, notebooks and the companion book are all free.
Free courseHugging Face · LLM Course
Hands-on and project-first, completely free, and the Agents Course certificate is free too. One of the most practical routes into AI engineering right now.
Free recordingsFull Stack Deep Learning · LLM Bootcamp
Free recordings of the bootcamp for engineers shipping LLM apps: prompt engineering through deployment and LLMOps, taught by practitioners.