Ask HN: Dipping my toes with artificial intelligence and what to expect? (CS)

Recently I got accepted into computer club on my faculty. I got opportunity to choose on which team I would like to be, where we would be working on projects and workshops. Before, I got my interests mainly in OS/Systems programming, I had few smaller projects, solid knowledge of C, Data structures, Memory and Assembly. (started writing my Kernel and hopefully it would grow in some smaller OS). One of the colleagues asked me why wouldn't I join Ai team, and I was like nah it is too high level and full of black magic for me. But, I do not know why, that possibility started to resonate in my head for days. Firstly I had some concerns, besides looking at some stuff and seeing all those black boxes and magic happen in ~100 lines of python code.

- I am not sure how much math is needed. And I ask that because I am not having a lot of math on my faculty. First I was chasing EE degree, finished 2 years and I got to the point where I wasn't enjoying anything except math and programming subjects. So I quit and enrolled to CS where I am now. I got really solid background during EE studies, and when I got to CS I was feeling pretty at home with it. And I do not know what to expect with math in terms of Machine Learning, Deep Learning or Neural Networks. It looks to me like a lot of linear algebra and analysis.

- What would be bigger concern to me is how much of engineering you actually do with Ai? What I liked with OSs is that it felt pretty rad to me in terms of type of work you do. Plus you could easily get interested in DevOps or Distributed Systems, and those doors would be open too. With Ai it looks like piping and manipulating data from one "thing" to another. I won't include myself in those 5% of Computer Scientists that design Algorithms and software that is used to realize all that stuff that you import in few modules and functions in your project.

Thank you on your time, I appreciate any help or advice.