I left the question a bit open ended to see the diversity of the field and to hopefully gather advice that could benefit others as well.
That said, primarily _for me_ it's more defined in what it doesn't mean - Which is software engineering _using_ AI (eg - LLMs) and prompt engineering. I'm already a self-taught web/mobile developer with 10+ years experience, and have built some toy projects using LLMs and image diffusion models. Where I believe I have more interest is in the research scientist route. I have prior education in biology/ecology/behavior, and would love to combine the fields.