> 12 to 18 months of linear algebra

Do you mean full-time study, or something else? I’ve been using inference endpoints but have recently been trying to go deeper and struggling, but I’m not sure where to start.

For example, when selecting an ASR model I was able to understand the various architectures through high-level descriptions and metaphors, but I’d like to have a deeper understanding/intuition instead of needing to outsource that to summaries and explainers from other people.

I was projecting as classes, taken across 2 to 3 semesters.

You can gloss the basics pretty quickly from things like Kahn academy and other sources.

Knowing Linalg doesn't guarantee understanding modern ML, but if you then go read seminal papers like Attention is All You Need you have a baseline to dig deeper.