There are lots of people that are very passionate about machine learning and artificial intelligence. I would say try to find a meetup group near by (meetup.co

There are lots of people that are very passionate about machine learning and artificial intelligence. I would say try to find a meetup group near by (meetup.com). If your area isn't really a tech hub, I'm sure there is a near by University with a computer science department. You could always try to talk to a professor there that is doing similar research.