[hakobian]

Is there a word for the process of ai, where you don't condsider the goal?  I'm a first year type.  I want to learn more math to help my ideas.  Does calculus help tensor stuff?

[yotamarker]

I need some context to understand your question :
you are 1st year of what ?
what is this tensor you speak of ? the image recog one ?

at any rate I think an A.I always has a goal behind it's thoughts

[WriterOfMinds]

In your first question, are you asking about the way an AI itself operates, or are you asking about ways to learn about AI?  Maybe you are curious about general AI techniques/theories, as opposed to specific algorithms/functions?

There are problems and applications for which you would use calculus and tensors together, but I don't think you have to learn about calculus before you learn about tensors.  Getting practice with vectors and matrices might be helpful though (both can be viewed as special cases of tensors).