Most of our daily life has been taken over by AI Products in some way or the other. AI is all around us. Upskilling in this field can help you power ahead your career. Read further to learn about M S Narayanan’s journey with Great Learning’s PGP Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Course in his own words.
Hi, I am M.S.Narayanan. I currently work for Oracle Financial Services Solution (OFSS) as a Technical Director. My primary roles are design and architecture. I am a mechanical engineer by education, a product of BITS Pilani, Rajasthan, with 22 years of professional experience in the financial domain with a very strong focus on technology, solution, and delivery.
I was managing a complete Core Banking Transformation of one of the leading South Indian Banks and planning for the merger of two large Public Sector Banks in the country due to recent consolidation by the Finance Ministry.
As part of my work, where I continuously evaluate the use and application of new technologies, and due to my basic interest, I had always wanted to work on AIML. To be honest, the idea of deep fakes piqued my curiosity. AIML is rapidly evolving, and it is impossible to not feel its impact in our daily lives every single day in one way or the other. I wanted to understand the technology right from the grass root levels rather than being just a user. All this made me lookout for an elaborate and structured way to learn this, and Great Learning did a great job at that.
I am based out of Bangalore. Before this pandemic crippled our day-to-day lives, traveling to and from work was a nightmare. Our idea for the Capstone Project stemmed out of this. Traffic in Bangalore is primarily contributed by callous driving and not-so-smart management of traffic. While human characteristics cannot be controlled, we wanted to evaluate and see how we can automate and streamline traffic flow in Bangalore. Our project quantifies the problem by evaluating how dense the traffic is by assigning a traffic density score. By integrating this with smart signals and upstream processing, we wanted to leverage AIML & IoT streaming technologies to facilitate optimized and automated traffic management at key intersections.
Initially, we faced issues like: Where to get the data? How to extract data from video clips? How to simulate various weather conditions and image quality? Without our mentors, it would have been difficult to find solutions or suggestions to most of our problems. With so much of the project happening over zoom due to covid restrictions, they played a vital role in getting our problems addressed and guided us when we were stuck.
Some of the impacts of the capstone project were –
Personally,
- Gave me the confidence and ability to analyze and understand emerging market technologies.
- Ability to diversify/upskill and be relevant in the market
- Understand that any complex problem can be addressed and broken down into simpler solutions.
Professionally,
- Instead of looking out for something new in the market, I was able to apply my AIML skillset to my existing organization
- Organization was cognizant of the achievement and supported me towards a gradual transition into newer and complex technologies.
- I currently handle AIML initiatives within our region and coordinate with different verticals in driving these initiatives.
If I were to advise other aspirants, then well, there is no right and wrong way to approach a problem. The focus should be on whether our intended approach will support the business objectives of the organization and enhance the customer experience of our customers. Understanding the core mathematics of AIML is important to really appreciate what really goes on behind the scenes. Never stop learning. Keep yourself up to date with what is happening in the AIML world by subscribing to specific and useful newsletters and articles. Before jumping on to new opportunities, get your hands dirty in your current organization.
