Thanks for the response! I'm torn between AI research and just implementing models with my own data, I do enjoy math but I can't seem to understand advanced math, that might change after I get an engineering degree though, or not ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But for the time being, I'm just wondering if people who win Kaggle competitions implement their own algorithm, or do they just read a lot and try techniques that are already out there?