You may or may not be able to start before the official "start date" (they like to have everyone start at the same time for the sake of group discussions; you don't have to worry about any of that).
If you can, watch the first three videos. They're honestly a really great introduction to ML, and shouldn't take more than like 15 minutes or so.
https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning
Sign up, it's free, and nice.
You may or may not be able to start before the official "start date" (they like to have everyone start at the same time for the sake of group discussions; you don't have to worry about any of that).
If you can, watch the first three videos. They're honestly a really great introduction to ML, and shouldn't take more than like 15 minutes or so.