Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are rapidly growing and this would be the right time to enter the field and build a successful career. Read further to learn about Madhusudan’s journey with Great Learning’s PGP Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Course in his own words.
With 21+ years of experience in the IT industry, I am currently playing the role of Enterprise Solutions Architect with ManpowerGroup, one of the largest global staffing companies. My work spans various areas of Enterprise architecture such as Data, Integration, Digital, etc.
For about five years before joining PGP-AIML, I was primarily advising clients in the areas of Intelligent Automation – using technologies such as AI/ML, RPA, Analytics, BPM, etc. I was also helping clients make the shift to Digital – from defining a strategy to drawing architecture blueprints. I was looking forward to acquiring in-depth, hands-on skills on AI and ML, with a comprehension of the practical challenges associated with working on AI/ML projects.
In the fast-changing world of Technology, it is both important and challenging to keep acquiring new skills, to keep oneself relevant in the workplace. While I had acquired a breadth of knowledge across several technology areas (as part of work I do), it was important for me to compliment them with in-depth skills in selected technologies such as Data Science and AI. I had a positive attitude towards that challenge because of the numerous opportunities to upskill myself. Part of the challenge was to make a wise choice of where to invest time/money in an area of study that is beneficial to the career.
I spent a fair amount of time researching courses on AI/ML, with the key criteria being – flexibility to balance with office work, course curriculum, quality of instruction, and cost. I relied on inputs from colleagues and reviews on social media to gather more information on the course. I went through sample instruction videos of lectures from accomplished faculty from premier institutions. PGP AI-ML at Great Learning satisfied my requirements in all aspects, and hence I decided to pursue it.
The mentored learning sessions at Great Learning are helpful in a couple of aspects like-
- What one has learned over the week from a recorded class gets validated in person-to-person interaction. Any discrepancies in understanding concepts are ironed out.
- The ideas learned in the recorded sessions are understood much better in a problem-solving environment. We always had real-life problem-solving in the mentoring sessions that cemented our knowledge.
- The mentors are able to bring in the industry perspective to articulate practical challenges faced when working on AI/ML problems. Insights from the mentors into customer expectations, data gathering challenges, model optimization, etc., were valuable in the learning process.
My mentor provided the right guidance in approaching the assignments and Capstone program. Their advice on how to train and compare different models, tools, and techniques for HP tuning, results in visualization all helped me for successful completion of the Capstone assignment.
When solving AI/ML problems –model training and evaluation is the final step. There are lots of challenges around collecting data from different sources, cleaning data, making the required transformations, planning for tools & infrastructure, data governance, etc. Without a sound knowledge of these areas, learning only to train analytical models will not be of much use. Thus, my advice to all those who are just starting with learning analytics would be to focus on getting your fundamentals on data architecture strong.
