Hello,

Yes this is a genuine doubt. I myself invested years into preparing for gate ,getting jobs in PSU before moving to private sectors. My advice is do not go by someone's hunch. You should take the next steps based on your goals , dreams and financials. You don't need PhD or mtech to get hired but you need skills that are transferrable to the job that you will do. These skills can be coding , communications skills , negotiation skills , and based on an initial interaction with you I will be able to guide you better. You can book a free trial session with me so I can give you a personalized suggestion.

AI is not a core/standardized branch. Go for CSE. I see many people lacking in fundamental knowledge of CSE. You can't learn advanced concepts if your basics are not clear. If you are interested in ML/AI domain, then you can choose elective subjects(if you have that option) or learn from outside your curriculum. But make sure your understand and know basics well. It is true that people with Masters or PhD will be preferred in ML/AI/Data roles, but this is true for any branch, that people with better degrees generally tend to get better launch platform. It is just that their are a lot of people with advance degrees in this domain so you found them everywhere. If you interested in data domain you can start by looking into analytics or data engineering and slowly move into ML/AI, that is what I did too.