Java - A good place to begin if over all goal is ML and Ai? I am currently studying Java (Se &amp;&amp; EE). I am wondering if it is a good platform for developing ML algorithms for AI.
Areas of interest: facial rec - Speech Rec - understanding conversation in group conversations.
Financial Institutions: Risk assessment ML, etc.
If goal is to develop ML algorithms then focus on Maths concepts linear algebra, probability and statistics. Try out CS problem solving basic data structure and algorithms. 
Python has good ML libraries but if you know java then you can pick python easily.