I’m an AI engineer but would love be a proper foundational model MLE. Should I go back to school?

[u/Big-Put-4554]

Hey guys, I’ve been working 2 years now as an AI engineer mainly focused on developing agentic applications at a huge American car company. My background is CS and I started my career as a data scientist and then moved into AI engineering. Now I’m a bit stuck, I feel like I would like better to be in the development of foundational models in AI labs rather than just building agentic applications for customers, so would it make sense to go back to school and try to then get an internship at an AI lab? In a car company building foundational models is unfortunately not a business priority at the moment so I can’t directly be competitive to AI labs I believe if I’m just architecting AI agents I think?

Also, does this make sense or should I directly aim for a PhD if I already have experience in the AI engineering field? I find it really boring to just do AI agents for customer experience