Opportunities in AI

These years, the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) may be the most widely-discussed technological development. However, many have very little idea about AI. Victor Wibisono, who is currently working as a data engineer and who also has his own business which leverages machine learning techniques, demystifies what artificial intelligence is all about so that people can learn and use this for their professional life.

He began his talk saying that traditionally, only those who have PhDs or have a lot of experience are considered for a data science job. Furthermore, many people seem to think that it is a field restricted to those who are exceptionally intelligent. However, this is not so. He points to Jeremy Howard who started his career by studying Philosophy. Jeremy had got his start in the field of AI by joining Kaggle, an online community for data scientists of which he eventually became the President. Victor used this example to show that you do not need to possess a lot of mathematical knowledge or an extensive coding background to be able to utilise AI. There were two resources that he pointed out to be of good use. Firstly, it is the book Deep Learning for Coders with fastai and PyTorch. This book provides a good way for people who are interested in learning about AI but who do not possess any coding background. Furthermore, there is also an online course, which allows users to quickly build and train their own models.

Victor also mentioned that there are now many fields in which AI is being utilised. For example, in the field of humanities, Natural Language Processing (NLP) can be utilised to make document reading more efficient. In the field of physical sciences, AI models can detect anomalies in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Ultrasound and X-ray images. AI technologies are also being used by tech companies to build recommendation systems, something we would see in a daily basis in YouTube with its recommendation features.

In addition, Victor pointed a good way for people who are interested to use their skills by joining Kaggle competitions. These competitions help provide ways to people to test out their models to solve problems. Here is where a lot of people get their start in this field. Furthermore, due to the current Coronavirus pandemic, commerce and services are going online and this fact has caused an upsurge of demand for people who can understand and utilise data so as to help companies and government entities to provide better online services. For those who are still new to this field, he also pointed out that we should not limit ourselves to look for a full-time job but we should hunt for various freelance opportunities.

Lastly, while not everyone might be immediately interested in working in this field, it is good to raise people’s awareness on the field. It is especially important since AI will seemingly greatly affect the developments in the world in the future.

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Aurelio Jethro Prahara