Embrace a career in artificial intelligence, the millennial way
From the world’s largest tech companies to start-ups, everyone is looking for people well-versed with Artificial Intelligence (AI). But a career in this business is no cakewalk: A lot of mathematics, constant leaning and understanding human behaviour are just some of the ways to get a foothold in this fast-growing industry. We spoke to five AI professionals, who tell us that a career in this field is about many different things, from data analysis, text and image recognition to linguistics—and no, evil robots do not figure in the list.
Ghosh, 26, spends his days looking at X-rays. “I am almost a semi-radiologist. I can easily read chest X-rays and brain series,” says this computer engineer from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. Ghosh joined Nomura as a data scientist immediately after his bachelor’s degree, but quit after a year. “I was working on reducing risk and I surely impacted someone somewhere, but I couldn’t see the results for myself,” he says. He then spent six months in 2015-16 talking to tech start-up founders about the kinds of problems they were solving, and also did refresher courses on machine learning. “ I keep up by reading research papers on ArXiv.org and solving problems and challenges on websites like Kaggle,” says the Mumbai-based Ghosh, explaining why continuous learning is the only way to forge a career in AI.
In 2016, he joined health tech start-up Qure.ai as part of its founding team, working on deep-learning algorithms for radiology image processing. He is also a project evaluator and classroom mentor for AI courses on online platform Udacity, and a classroom machine-learning instructor for Mumbai- based ed tech company Greyatom. “My teaching assignments at Udacity and Greyatom help me formulate complex maths problems in a simple and step-by-step manner, as well as debug problems when students get stuck,” he says.
Biggest myth: “People think AI is some kind of magic tool that can solve all problems. It’s only a statistical tool. For an AI solution to be effective, it needs certain conditions fulfilled, like having plenty of data to work with,” he says.
What I love: “I get to work on maths and use it to work on something that saves lives in a very real way,” he says.
Money matters: Compensation can range from ₹10-₹12 lakh per annum for graduates with no experience, going up to ₹15-₹35 lakh per annum for professionals with a couple of years of experience
Developer evangelist at Amazon, and city ambassador at City.ai
Maheshwar’s day job involves working with developers around Amazon’s Alexa platform. The 31-year-old speaks to developers around the country on building better voice applications. And, as the Bengaluru city ambassador for the global AI community City.ai, he organizes gatherings, inviting speakers to highlight trends, industry insights and practicable approaches in the field of applied AI. After completing his bachelor’s of engineering from Visvesvaraya Technological University, Belgaum, in 2009, Maheshwar worked as software developer at TCS and Taram Software before joining InMobi in 2013 as a developer marketer. In 2016, he moved to Bengaluru-based chat messaging company Gupshup. Last year, he joined Amazon. If you want a career in AI, “keep your eyes and ears open, follow the latest research, attend conferences. Many cities have AI communities, both online and offline, and lots of free resources. I got the opportunity to be the city ambassador of City.ai after I met the founder of City.ai at a conference in Vienna, and heard from him that he was looking to start in Bengaluru,” he says.
Biggest myth: “That AI is about talking to robots. It’s about speech data, linguistics, and these are just a subset of AI technologies,” he says.
What I love: “Interacting with developers every day, and teaching people to build stuff is exciting,” he says.
Money matters: Compensation can range from ₹10-₹60 lakh per annum.
