Applications of Machine Learning – A session by Silicon Valley expert Ravi Mirchandaney

“How is Machine Learning (ML) shaping our world? What makes for a successful ML product and what are its ethical considerations? To answer these questions and more, Ravi Mirchandaney, Silicon Valley’s leading tech expert, hosted an online session packed with powerful industry insights for SP Jain School of Global Management’s Bachelor of Data Science (BDS) students from 2018, 2019 and 2020 intakes.

Speaker Profile

Ravi Mirchandaney has a PhD in Computer Engineering from the University of Massachusetts, USA. He is currently Head, Digital Products Engineering at JLL. His areas of expertise are SaaS Enterprise Applications, High Performance Parallel and Distributed Systems, and Practical Applications of ML. He has over 30 years of experience in the tech industry in Silicon Valley. He has worked in top management at Oracle, Wiser Solutions, Vendavo and C3.ai. He is also an avid golfer.

Key Takeaways

During the session held on October 27, 2020, Mr Mirchandaney explained the core concepts of ML with the help of three case studies: Alexa by Amazon, Facebook and Uber. Our BDS student from the 2020 intake, Nikhil Vasudevan, shares his experience of attending the session and some of the key learnings:

“The concept of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning has always intrigued me, and the way Mr Mirchandaney explained, it got me more intrigued. I feel it’s the closest we can get to a superpower. He spoke about not falling in love with technology but crafting practical solutions that help businesses. He noted how ML products cannot always be perfect and that there would be some trade-offs you would have to make.

While discussing the case studies of Amazon, Facebook and Uber, he explained the critical business problems that the three tech giants are facing and the steps they are taking to try and overcome these challenges. He also covered the practical aspects of ML that include modelling, data and metrics, and how ML and software engineering go hand-in-hand.

One of the most important takeaways from the session was that Mr Mirchandaney advised us not to wait for a breakthrough in technology and deploy our project and keep updating it. He highlighted how this is the most exciting time to be an ML Engineer/Practitioner as there is a vast array of interesting problems to be solved.

I thank the faculty and advisors for arranging this session which helped us learn more about the human superpower!”