What should we do regarding extremely similar questions or duplicates?

Question

The following questions are extremely similar

1. https://ai.stackexchange.com/q/8641/2444

• Closed as a duplicate of What kind of education is required for researchers in AI? and then deleted, as the answers weren't particularly useful.

2. https://ai.stackexchange.com/q/8780/2444

• Closed as a duplicate of What are the steps to follow to learn artificial intelligence?

3. What are the steps to follow to learn artificial intelligence? (get started)

4. https://ai.stackexchange.com/q/3374/2444

• Closed as a duplicate of What are the steps to follow to learn artificial intelligence?

5. https://ai.stackexchange.com/q/10513/2444

• Closed as a duplicate of How does one start learning artificial intelligence? and deleted given that the users have not contributed to the site for like 1 year and they have basically never participated if not in that post. Furthermore, the given answer wasn't particularly useful.

6. https://ai.stackexchange.com/q/3548/2444

• Closed as a duplicate of How does one start learning artificial intelligence?

7. https://ai.stackexchange.com/q/4933/2444

• Closed as a duplicate of and merged with How should I get started with artificial intelligence?, which is an older question, which basically asks exactly the same thing.

8. https://ai.stackexchange.com/q/9032/2444

• Closed as a duplicate of How should I get started with artificial intelligence?

9. https://ai.stackexchange.com/q/3740/2444

• Closed as too broad

10. https://ai.stackexchange.com/q/7986/2444

• Closed as too broad and then deleted because the answers were all more or less poor or only opinions

11. https://ai.stackexchange.com/q/6909/2444

• Closed as a duplicate of and merged with How should I get started with artificial intelligence?

12. https://ai.stackexchange.com/q/4464/2444 (get started, sources)
13. https://ai.stackexchange.com/q/6679/2444

• Closed as a duplicate of What are the steps to follow to learn artificial intelligence?

14. https://ai.stackexchange.com/q/4796/2444

• Closed as too broad and deleted because the answers weren't particularly useful and the users that provided the answers have not visited the site for a long time.

15. https://ai.stackexchange.com/q/8203/2444

• Closed as primarily opinion-based

16. https://ai.stackexchange.com/q/13197/2444

• Closed as a duplicate of https://ai.stackexchange.com/q/8203/2444

17. https://ai.stackexchange.com/q/6903/2444

• Closed as primarily opinion-based

18. https://ai.stackexchange.com/q/8432/2444

• Closed as a duplicate of What are the mathematical prerequisites for an AI researcher?

19. https://ai.stackexchange.com/q/13024/2444

• Closed as primarily opinion-based

20. What kind of education is required for researchers in AI? (research)

21. https://ai.stackexchange.com/q/12899/2444

• Closed as a duplicate of What kind of education is required for researchers in AI? and then deleted because there was no answer.

22. https://ai.stackexchange.com/q/13556/2444

• Closed as a duplicate of What are the mathematical prerequisites for an AI researcher? and then deleted.

23. What are the mathematical prerequisites for an AI researcher? (math for research)

24. What are the mathematical prerequisites to be able to study general artificial intelligence? (math for AGI)

25. https://ai.stackexchange.com/q/8131/2444

• Closed as too broad

And the list goes on. I believe that some of these are not duplicates. However, most of them are duplicates (because they lead to the same answer). Why are these questions not marked as duplicates? This is the only SE website (that I know of) that allows so similar questions to remain open. I think it is unproductive to keep having all these very similar questions, so most of them should be marked as duplicates (of the first question asked).

We also have a similar ML series

1. How can I start learning mathematics for machine learning?
2. What do I need to study for machine learning?
3. https://ai.stackexchange.com/q/10725/2444
4. https://ai.stackexchange.com/q/5589/2444
5. How to start looking for machine learning opportunities in projects
6. What are the prerequisites for starting out in deep learning?
7. https://ai.stackexchange.com/q/7961/2444
8. https://ai.stackexchange.com/q/14136/2444
9. Which courses in computer science and logic are relevant to Machine Learning?

Some of these questions have even been closed as off-topic or too broad.

See also

1. How can I systematically learn about the theory of neural networks?

Answer 1

Since these questions will keep getting asked by new people who won't know to check for duplicates, I would create new canonical questions and close these old questions as duplicates of the canonical questions. I would tag the questions with a tag like "introduction-to-ai" or "faq" so that they are easy to find and so it's easy to redirect new people to these questions.

I would create the following canonical questions:

• Resource requests

  • What are good introductory AI/Machine Learning books
  • What are good online AI/Machine Learning courses

• Introduction to AI/Machine Learning

  • How can I, a beginner, start learning about AI/Machine Learning
  • What mathematical/computer science prerequisites are necessary to start learning about AI/Machine Learning?
• Careers
  • What career options are available for those who study AI/Machine Learning
  • How can I, a beginner, pursue a career in AI/Machine Learning

I think these six questions cover all of the questions you've listed, but by all means create new questions as the need arises.

The advantage of doing this is that less questions means that more effort can be devoted to each question, and that the questions will be easily found by people.