I started buying AI textbooks circa 2010 anticipating something was about to change dramatically.
Sadly, I didn't work through the books like I had planned at all. Lacked the discipline to come home and work through them at the time. I really regret it now as things are blowing up and, as you said, it seems like every week there is something new and interesting
Luckily, deep learning is built on super complicated mathematical foundations, but the practice isn't. You could quickly get up to speed with a library like Keras and be productive, building things and trying them out without needing years of theoretical training. I'd highly recommend looking into it, most of the papers are relatively easy to read, and rely largely on empirical results and intuition, rather than deep theoretical proofs or the like.
Sadly, I didn't work through the books like I had planned at all. Lacked the discipline to come home and work through them at the time. I really regret it now as things are blowing up and, as you said, it seems like every week there is something new and interesting