Industry Webinar on ‘AI in Business – Separating Hype from Reality’ by Rajesh Gaurav, Ph.D. – ISB, MYRA Alumnus

On Friday, December 18th, MYRA students and faculty attended a virtual lecture titled “AI for Business. Separating Hype from Reality”

It was delivered by Rajesh Gaurav, an alumnus of the MYRA School of Business who has extensive experience working in Analytics and Data Science. Rajesh now enables firms to make better business decisions using a mix of data, technology, and quantitative methods such as Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and other Statistical Models. He has experience in managing relationships with business leaders and executives, leading a portfolio of projects, and enabling the adoption of data-driven insights in multiple Fortune 500 organizations.

Rajesh is passionate to share his knowledge by teaching and hopes to change the prevailing mindset of using Analytics just as a tactical tool. He believes that Analytics should be a part of Strategy, and fostering an analytics culture is equally important.

Currently, Rajesh is pursuing doctoral studies (FPM/Ph.D.) in Quantitative Marketing at ISB. He has also worked as a Research Assistant at IIM Bangalore. Before entering research, Rajesh worked with Infosys as a Technology Architect and with NxtGen as a Practice Lead for Analytics. Rajesh is a PGPX from MYRA School of Business and has a Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Kharagpur.

The webinar was covered many interesting technical and theoretical topics, including:

• The philosophy of Elon Musk who stated that “AI is an existential threat to humanity” compared to that of Jack Ma, who thinks that “a computer may be clever, but human beings are much smarter”
• Different types of learning: Rule-based, Supervised, Unsupervised, Reinforcement, and Semi-supervised, etc
• A detailed history of AI, from 1956 to the Present
• An explanation of Deep Learning – what it is, and how it works
• Current challenges of AI, and future predictions
• How students can easily use AI to solve real-world business problems – particularly using Microsoft, Amazon, and Google APIs

The webinar was very well-received, and one of MYRA’s faculty stated that “Rajesh Gaurav gave an extremely authentic and realistic representation of AI. There is a lot of hype surrounding the topic, but he rightly summarized what AI can do and what it cannot do. Students now know how to use AI in the present, and have an idea of what to expect in the future.”

This webinar was part of an ongoing series, organized by the MYRA Career Services Office. The goal is to connect current MYRA students with MYRA Alumni – and foster discussion around cutting-edge technologies and how they can be applied across the business world.

To register for the next webinar, please visit myra.ac.in/webinar. Attendance is free and all are welcome.