[rwanda]

Thank you for the thoughtful response. Switching to medicine is something I've been contemplating for a couple of months and though about all pros & cons, best-, worst-, average-, expected outcomes extensively, yet I still feel at a lock. To put it shortly, my best case is better staying at my current program and my worst case is worse. The average case is too difficult to determine as the probabilities I assign to each case are speculative.

As for a PhD in medicine being easier, I don't mean that doing the actual PhD is easier but rather the entrance requirements are. The medical school in my country is good so I can just do my PhD there which would be quite easy. On the other hand, the technical school I'm in doesn't have that much research in machine learning so I'd have to apply abroad which would make things much harder. Not to mention that machine learning is a hot area and perhaps the most competitive of all PhD-subjects.

[cehrlich]

Is your dream a PhD in machine learning, or to work on difficult machine learning problems? Many people (most, probably) come out of their PhD less happy than they were before, maybe there is a different way you can pursue this interest? If you even have a chance of becoming a PhD candidate, I assume you already have some skills in the subject that you could apply at a corporate job, on an OSS project, etc. I understand the appeal of "pure" research, but there are other paths as well.

I don't know much about the field so I can only guess, but maybe you can find some people here or elsewhere to talk about this who have the relevant experience?

[rwanda]

My dream is to improve & develop new machine learning algorithms. Weather I'd do this as a researcher or through a private company doesn't really matter to me. It just seems to be a prerequisite to have done a PhD to most such positions I see ( Take Google Brain as an example).

Unfortunately, there aren't too many people/research in my interest area in my country, but I'll try to ask my classmates. Thanks for your comment!