Diploma in Artificial Intelligence for Business Student Panel

morning everyone um yes uh good morning my name is alex connock i'm at oxford and uh welcome to the webinar on the oxford diploma ai for business um also hosting is katie richards join us quickly say hello kate hello everybody it's lovely to see you all i can see people filtering in from all over the world and thank you very much for joining us and um i'm really looking forward to the session yeah so so if you'd like to participate just just stick something in the chat i've got the chat window open so i will see if you if you put something in the chat and so just just to kick us off if anyone could just say where you are that'd be quite good i'd just like to know where people are if you just stick it in the chat that'd be great and what i'm going to do is i'm going to um talk you through a little bit about the course that we're running and also much more important introduce you to six people who are on the course this year who've done the 2021 iteration of the course and actually we've had two iterations in 20 and 21 so so these guys started um in roughly january february of 2021 and we've actually had another lot to start in the autumn and this would be the third iteration into 2022 so we've got people in finland amsterdam jersey which is good we've got someone from church we've got don's from jersey one of our current um uh people on the course germany colombia fantastic brilliant okay well we'll look forward to everybody do feel free to jump in i've got a few slides i'm going to show them and then i'm going to come out of the slides and just go to see if faces but i just wanted to give you a few basics first of all so what are we talking about today um diploma in ai for business is what we're talking about which is a master's level qualification for experienced professionals with five at least five years of experience um it takes place across the year in four very very very intensive blocks of one week at oxford um i say at oxford of course um for part of last year where we had to do um some of it remotely and indeed we probably next year we'll have to do it in some kind of hybrid fashion because there may be people uh around the world who are unable to come but um but we certainly will be teaching at oxford and those who can make it sort of super welcome south korea shinzo and china fantastic um it's taught by a sort of combination really of oxford academics and um and then visiting lecturers and industry guests and we try to keep that mix going because that enables us to get the best of both worlds frankly and and again it's something that you can use if you like as a pathway to an oxygen mba so you can effectively count it as credits towards the nba okay do you want to just say something about that actually about um which of those points in particular on the nba point oh yes um so there's um there's a pathway and from all of um from all executive department programs to the office of executive mba um it's um completing a diploma and completing a diploma program doesn't guarantee you a place um on the executive on the executive mba but if you do go on and to complete the longer program and you benefit from a number of um module exemptions and having completed the diploma program and there's also a feat reduction um so if you were interested in kind of pursuing a um a longer relationship with the business school and at the university and that is um that's an option that that is available fantastic and so just to remind you before we get on to the the meat of the session how to get in touch that's kate's email there kate richards dot kate dot richards sps dot htdk also just reach out to me on linkedin if you like um i love to hear people from people i love to hear where everybody is and moritz has asked four by four relates to four modules over four days uh actually no it's five days more it's it's uh tuesday through saturday four times and those those modules are roughly three months apart i hope that makes sense if it doesn't come back in the chat um so what i'm going to do is i'm going to come out of my slideshow and i'm going to introduce you to our guests because that's the most important thing today so we have six people who are currently taking the course and i thought um what i would do is just briefly introduce you to each one of that perhaps ask them each to tell you kind of what what they do i guess to start with and also why they took the course and well and anything that they found interesting about us should we start with you alexia um alexa so you're in the uh well you tell us what you what do you do alexa um okay hi everyone so my name is alexia i work for l'oreal and i'm a brand business director for a perfume and cosmetic brand um l'oreal is the license for for that brand so i'm in charge of basically a team of i'd say marketeers uh who are in charge of launching juicy food products in the uk and island market so when i say marketing it's um anything from classical product marketing to digital activation in-store activation media planning overall business piloting etc um so as i'm sure you can hear i'm originally from france but i've been based in london for 10 years now and well basically when i got the opportunity to join this program i was extremely excited because i've always been super interested in the topic from i guess originally reading maybe newspapers articles like kind of general knowledge to being super lucky to work for a company that invests in you know upskilling people and overall digital transformation and alexa why would ai specifically in the context of l'oreal's quite famous digital transformation why would aia be a useful um addition to that yeah so i guess in terms of the most consumer facing side of things we have lots of you know new services development for instance that i think have made the press and you might have heard about such as modiface which allows for virtual trial of our products so think for instance of virtually trying a lipstick on your phone um which has of course taken off significantly during the last year for obvious reasons of physical point of sales being closed but of course it was already on on the journey and the underpass uh way before that for our company and that that's one example uh and then there are lots of projects there are less consumer facing have a huge value in terms of you know smart forecasting um kind of demand planning p l management so it's a lot about about data and what we do with those like um loads of data that companies such as varial has um so lots of different projects and i guess uh participating to to this program has really really accelerated my learning and understanding of all those projects which are directly related to my day job but also almost i'd say globally in my understanding of the company and the business and seeing future opportunities which is probably one of the most excited about fantastic thank you so much to lexi we'll come back to you um let's move on should we talk to kristen kristen you're in the united states um at what time is it there very early thank you so much for joining us so early 6 25 but i think my chicago friend on the line is uh is even the earlier earlier bird but good morning everybody good day um i'm kristen jilks i run um i'm with a big four consulting firm uh alex can say who i'm with i can't um and so i run our artificial intelligence r d practice um across the americas and for me ai has been absolutely essential in everything we do for delivering our clients we are radically facing a shift in the way we transform audits we are radically shifting the way we approach tax evaluations we are radically shifting everything we do in banking pharmaceuticals so ai is in everything that we do and this course was really important for me because the last time i really took a deep dive into ai was a solid 10 years ago and so much has changed that i wanted a refresher and i wanted to always stay on top of of the latest and greatest and i've surpassed that objective and more um with this course and made exceptionally great friends which i promised yesterday i was going to give big bear hugs to um for for those who were interested in hugs so so so without sort of fishing for compliments on the course's behalf what do you what do you think are the kind of things that you've able being able to reflect upon by taking this course that have been useful to you for your day job you know we we really dove into and maybe jonathan can even speak to some of this but we really dove into the use and applicability of of certain um ai algorithms in certain circumstances and really evaluated different questions around bias which which just gets you thinking about things that perhaps you wouldn't have thought of before which is always a positive outcome to think think about things differently okay since you mentioned jonathan let's talk to jonathan so jonathan you're a ai specialist i guess in a startup aren't you would you like to tell us what you do and what the significance of ai is to that is that business yes of course i just give very quick introduction hi everyone my name is jonathan i'm originally from london i'm actually in oxford at the moment and can probably speak more about why i'm here later in the call but we do have access to the accelerator space for the company we're starting supported by oxford but for my background i did actually spend some time studying artificial intelligence at masters level and then at a company called bloomsbury ai which was subsequently sold to facebook and since then i've been working in fintech and most recently at jpmorgan helping to build a bank from scratch in the uk and now since the start of the pandemic we've been trying to tackle anti-vaccine misinformation online and beginning a startup and my motivation for joining the course here at oxford was to complement some of the technology skills they have um with some of the other leadership skills which are required to deploy ai into production so it can be operationalized that's interesting so so you find that this inverted comma softest side of ai skill set is also useful and covered in the course do you think i would say initially i thought it was perhaps softer but having begun really looking taking a closer look at some of the ethical concerns and some of the privacy concerns especially in light of gdpr and the upcoming legislation surrounding online safety bill um these skills aren't necessarily softer and perhaps some of the analysis we have to perform to to make sure that we're deploying these technologies in a safe and fair way is even more complex than deploying the technology outright interesting and we've got a question here from abhishek abhishek can you come and ask us your question can you jump in not sure is that even possible on this i don't know whether it's possible on the webinar actually um if oh here here they are hi abby hi yes we can hello everyone um good to see all of you uh uh the question that i have is um how beneficial would this uh diploma in aib for somebody who has been in the field of ai and data science for more than five years i've personally worked as a data scientist and you know a data science and a strategy consultant um in multiple industries uh just just wanted to get your thoughts on that well let me put that back to jonathan since you were talking before jonathan what do you think someone who's already got five years in data science is relevant i can't speak to five years in data science but what i can say is working in an analytical position as an engineer for probably over five years as well um very much of that focus was spent on a technical aspect but less time was spent thinking about the impact of that work and how it could adversely affect um specific minorities or people at risk of being on an incorrect decision of ai and how this needs to be embodied in the business processes and how it can be safeguarded yeah great answer how about you kristen do you have anything to say to that as well the average next question about the having experience already in data science yeah i was i was just gonna ping it but um i i absolutely think it's it's uh perfect for you it's perfect for someone who has the background because this field is changing so rapidly um i i was also the chief data scientist of a global division at morgan stanley um and and i've been in a my phd is in um in ai um so i'm like you i've got a solid background in it but but again the field is changing there's there's so much discussion around um how we can do it better how we can do it more ethically i know i've touched on that a few times the course is more about just ethics um but i i've learned something i in fact i think i said after the first module in and of itself that there were there were things around sampling and modeling and thing that i just hadn't thought of um and got more out of that than probably any of the other learning kind of opportunities that i was trying to do in the last five years so i think and then alexia there's also something of a network benefit to it isn't there in the sense that if you just put yourself in a room with 30 other people who are interested in the same field but from very different industries that can have quite a good sort of mind-expanding benefit can't it never mind the oxygen right i completely agree i think the value of of the program for me so far is as much in the actual teaching than in the conversation that we are having as a class with very very different backgrounds in the room different experiences different points of view so yeah i i completely agree even if i'm not a technical person myself i think there is there is a huge value in that in that mix of people and the discussions and coming from very very different angles and there's a question from moritz i'm curious to learn about the differentiating factors to make this course executive rather than a more regular diploma network access mode of delivery um so i'll i'll chuck a couple of things into that then i might put that one back to kate if i may um i think that uh the the quality and experience of the people on the course is probably in my mind what would make it definable as an executive course rather than a regular diploma course and so certainly even even being on the teaching staff i find it incredibly stimulating that people occupy such high positions in such a wide range of industries that's fairly unique the other thing is that we probably have much better guests than you would have on a traditional diploma so i do teach on the traditional oxford courses ba and mba and we don't have anywhere near the number of guests and high level guests that we would have on this executive diploma it's it's um it's uh an all together completely different level we have we have people from the very top of multiple industries coming to us every week that we teach the course and kate do you want us to chuck something anything in about the actual educational kind of rubric side of that answer yeah well i mean um kind of i think from an academic perspective um the um diploma is obviously a master's level um postgraduate qualification and so all of the teaching and and kind of again from an academic perspective all of the assessment is um done at on that level um so the um the diploma program is essentially taught at the same level and as our oxford executive mba um the um and from a profile perspective um students in the classroom have um on average uh 15 years of experience and so we're working with them kind of i'm very i'm kind of experienced um and increasingly senior executives um which i'll say morris has touched on from a networking and perspective obviously brings you into a classroom and kind of with them um with all of those people yeah okay let's carry let's carry on working our way through our fantastic cohort of existing people and perhaps move on to claire claire you bring a different perspective because you actually work in the government don't you so um even if you're not in industry quite unquote did you find that ai is taking over your life um yeah so i produce uh analysis on some threats and risks um within the cabinet office um and i think what's been really good about this course is it's helped me to think not just about where ai might change um different sort of drivers from the national security landscape but um to be able to take kind of really broad perspective and understand you know what's what are the market drivers for this technology you know how will that interact with um you know things like the kind of ways in which we wire our innovation ecosystem so it's kind of a really really uh fantastically sort of broad approach into the subject but i'd rather emphasize what a couple other people have said already which is the you know it's the mix in the classroom that really helps to get under the skin of this and to be examining some of the you know the tough questions and trade-offs around this technology and with you know somebody's coming in from a startup perspective or from the perspective of a big bank or from one of the big tech companies as well as uh as well as from government so i think that's really helping um me and others on the course who come from government backgrounds and get a get a really well-rounded um view on these technologies great thanks well we can come back to that government point if anyone wants to ask any questions about it but you mentioned startups and big banks and actually as it happens we have two final people from each of those categories so perhaps don it will come to you um you you work in um stock market listed uh startups i guess it might be the way to put it why did you why did you feel that you wanted to learn about aia yeah thanks alex so you know i'm a managing director of central plc so we're a listed company we're on a high growth uh um trajectory we've gone from 50 million to 350 million in the last four years um and we we provide technology services so domain names hosting um and also on online marketing technology to uh customers both businesses and individuals and in my role as managing director steering and translating that business strategy into reality it became very apparent ai is going to be an influence in every part of our business and um claire's mentioned it and and other people mentioned it the you could sit down and read a book and it won't be the same because you're getting real life experiences from experts and i want to emphasize experts here and and you're also getting a course that brings in a plethora of experience because you know i wouldn't go on a financial strategy course because i've done it as part of my education and work but i haven't done ai and i'll be people in positions of similar seniority from different aspects and and um and sectors that have bring come to that so we're all coming to this uh relatively open-minded uh and willing to learn and i think that that for me is a really big part and in terms of running the business the ai element will help us drive our revenue in terms of marketing identifying giving better products to our customers and all these things are covered in the course and then the other elements around cost optimization scaling our businesses so we can allow our people to work alongside alongside ai which is an important thing to learn as a business leader to understand where ai sits within the organization um because there's a lot of misinformation out there um headline headlines that sort of grab attention but don't have much substance behind it so i think as from a business leader perspective it's really important to put yourself into these situations and learn from you know genuinely really really well learned experts who are at the cutting field who challenge your thinking and you also learn from the from the others so that that was my motivation for my role uh of doing that um thank you don and the male hats asked the question mala had do you want to join in and ask your question live give you a couple of seconds to think about that um if not i'll ask it for you no there's no matter okay so thanks for useful info i'm a phd student in industry 4.0 and circular economy looking at how utilization of ai can help businesses overcome their negative environmental impacts that's an interesting one does anybody want to think about anybody who on our existing course wants to want to tackle that question about how the course can over help businesses overcome their negative environmental impacts kristin well we've um we've had natalia um who uh spoke to us so professor natalia uma yeah um so she has a her own company that evaluates satellite imagery and and so we learned how um how i'm the worst person to talk about computer vision she uses computer vision to study the earth and to evaluate the incremental changes in um in in agriculture and other other sort of visible signs of of the the earth's performance if you want to put it like that you're using computer division and other ai techniques to do that so it's a really good example because you actually haven't thought about it this is a really good example yeah and but i suppose that's a specific on a general level absolutely the ai tools that you would um hopefully become versatile you know in across the course would many of them be applicable to um climatology which is of course um with us and with every business um i'm conscious that we haven't um come to albert yet but just before we do um question from sriram will the executive diploma provide a similar level of access to oxford resources and network comparable to programs such as mba from oxford side will be any restrictions that's a good question um again i would say it it offer the course does offer access to um oxford campus say business schools specifically and the libraries which are amazing um comparable to mba from oxford saeed same the same access to the camps to the uh to the faculty that um however obviously you're only there four weeks as opposed to the nine months that you would be there if you did the mba um kate do you want to pick up anything else on that um yes so um in terms of um sort of obviously becoming a part of the and the school in the university network and that's a part of every um so you um become a part of the um the business school community and also part of the community at um at the university of oxford um so for the um the time that you're enrolled on the diploma and you're a student at the business school and just as any other and you have access to all of our resources and and then kind of going forward and you become a member of the oxford business alumni network and also um a member of the alumni network at the university of oxford as well yeah and the other day i walked into the coffee bar and said it wasn't during a period that we're teaching this course and i bumped into one of the guys who's on the course so he was definitely making the most of the facilities which is great um needy's asked is the course completely online or are there on-campus modules there are absolutely on-campus modules there will be four weeks or four individual weeks of on-campus teaching in 2022 as indeed there have been this year even with the pandemic um actually i think we missed the first one the first one was um uh purely online but thereafter it's been hybrid um uh albert let's come to you so you work in banking and prior to that you worked in the travel sector what was it what was it that appealed to you about um finding out more about ai um well i work in banking and more specifically i work in nature or in human resources so i suppose i i represent the cultural side of some of this transformation um it's obvious i think we all we're all on the call because we all understand that ai is prevalent it's happening it's happening faster it's it's it's being embedded all over the organization now typically what happens in in banks and other organizations is all the all the cool tech bits happen elsewhere before they come to hr um but i think what we're also beginning to realize is it's affecting organizations to such an extent that the way people work in interact is changing so if you're working in hr then it's obviously incumbent upon you to try and understand well what are those changes what does it mean so that you can begin adjusting and change you know you know your policies processes etc to make it work for everyone and do you find that the course has helped you in understanding sometimes i think that they think courses like this can be they can be quite useful in kind of demystifying language so that so that you can participate in conversations that you otherwise might not have been able to actively participate in even if you're not the person directly running the tech do you think that's at all applicable in your situation absolutely i am not a technical ai person by any stretch of the imagination um but i think the course has been really useful in terms of yeah due to your point demystifying things and actually making you realize that everyone has something to contribute um i think if you if you reach larger ai is affecting politics it's affecting societies affecting cultures we all live in in communities and you know in countries we all work for organizations so actually everyone has got something to contribute and i think just sort of discovering that through the journey has been quite powerful because it then makes you realize that actually when when you're trying to deploy new ai or you're trying to get in a new system you're not just trying to get the technical guys to sit at the table and make a decision you actually want wider representation and you want more people to sort of participate so that you get to the right decisions about what you're trying to do yeah um great question from abhishek with this course helped move into leadership roles how does oxford help with that curious to know i'm actually going to answer that one by seamlessly transitioning um to um if i can find the right button to press sorry to a slide that i've got on um what what is actually in the course which says here we go i'm just going to move to that now so i can i could just talk you through a little bit of a course outline for a couple of minutes um can everybody see that okay yeah um so module one the landscape of technical disrupt technological disruption so understanding the complexity of the landscape and so forth growth ai and then module two the business of data and machine learning that's the one that gets the most technical very useful how did you guys feel about that module that was one with martin schmaltz you remember that did you do you enjoy that module someone said yes please someone amongst our participants hopefully they did um number number jonathan did you you enjoyed that module didn't you yeah i just just wanted to say that i think it it has an important focus on uh the economic theory that underpins why organizations need to adopt ai to remain competitive and so focus on being data centric as opposed to purely focusing on uh the technical methods to achieve ai we're also looking at what why should provide the signal to the ai that makes this possible yeah it's a really great summary um module three is ai in practice a kind of a practical implementation if you will okay and then to answer the original question from abhishek um module four which we're about to have with this cohort is strategic leadership in the age of ai so particularly functioning around leadership and how how ai skills can help leaders so i hope that answers your question abhishek um but that's a pretty good um quick summary of the year um in any given week i don't know whether you can see you probably can't see the detail of this but but this is the kind of way a day in the life of the course would function so each of those vertical columns is a day it's cut off on my screen but it would be tuesday to saturday and as you can see that we will have um we'll start usually at 12 o'clock sometimes we'll start at 11 with what we call a lark session which it works really well for the people um in asia uh who are for whom it's obviously later in the day we'll have one quite heavyweight lecture starting at 12 then we'll have lunch then we'll have another heavyweight lecture so in both cases they would be from kind of oxford academics then we have a break and then we would move on probably to a guest um somebody from industry in that particular case that that first day was solix younger who was previously with the foreign office we've had people from uk government that week we've heard another academic at 4 30 that week so a a an expert ai guest at 4 30 for a more discursive conversation less kind of syllabus based and then some usually some kind of event or function in the evening so that's how a week works and then any given lecture would be this is from module two the one that jonathan just referred to actually so this will be the first couple of slides before it got into the more sort of formula based stuff and this would be a kind of introductory stuff on machine learning so you can see that any given lecture would look probably like lectures that you've done at college before but with the lecture materials would be circulated in advance and you would be able obviously to ask any questions so we aim to take everyone with us and we certainly don't aim to drop anyone out through bombarding them with too much information and then as someone said i think alexia said we tend to try to develop the network effect as much as possible so for example we have we have a kind of book club where we have where people find interesting links about ai in the press or online in general or reports or interviews or podcasts or what have you and we turn we share them so that we collectively manage to stay up to date with what is an extremely fast-moving industry and those are the kind of basic building blocks really of how we how we've sort of functioned on the course and and i wouldn't i couldn't possibly emphasize enough that um you know participation is critical to it and hopefully the fact that there are six people here today um is evidence of that claire you've made a point about your take on the course you want to jump in and give us that yeah sure it's this is a little bit prompted around the question about you know will this help me to think about how to use ai to solve sustainability um challenges um i think the value of the course is that it equips you with a sort of toolkit to think about how to um potentially look at the value of ai for any kind of business problem because uh what we're doing um through the range of different kind of examples and you know networking conversations and you know looking at the theory as well as the practice is really just to assemble a really good understanding of what are they what are the factors that we need to take into account here um to work out how and where ai adds value um and what are the you know controls and considerations and you know people factors and skills factors and leadership factors as well as the technology factors that need to be in place to make that successful um so i think that's kind of you know a really sort of adaptable toolkit um to a whole range of different things that you know we on the course are trying to solve and it's kind of proven by the fact whenever we get you know the rs assignments which we haven't talked about yet but are of course part of course as well you know you can ask the same question really of each person despite the fact that someone working in a small startup first in a big bank first in government and it's you know there are there's equally applicable learning for all of those situations i think yeah actually and brilliantly just as you said the word assignment damien asked the question do you have exams after every module on premise not mentioned in your planning actually no is the answer to that damian what we do have is assignments which are take home um assignments to be done in a specific week and that week will usually fall about a month after the module the particular module is completed so you take a module mostly in oxford um go away for a month and then you will get given an assignment and i think it would be fair to say that i mean please do correct me if i'm wrong anyone on the call but but they're quite doable the assignments they're not designed to trip anyone up on the contrary they're designing to allow people the chance to explore and showcase what they found out about ai and its relevance to their industry is that fair would you say that's fair jonathan for alexia yeah i think it's fair for me so far and the three exams we've done were a very good opportunity to reflect on everything i learned apply the concepts that we've been taught that we've read about disgusting class um so no trick question but more an opportunity i'd say to to think about it further yeah yeah they do they're very they're very kind of industry applicable aren't they the questions and we tend to try to ask quite good open-ended questions which will be capable of being answered in a sort of sector-specific way way by everyone because we're really focusing on finding out what you do know rather than tricking you and trying out what you don't know so it's the very opposite of oxford exams when i was undergraduate where they would get you in a hall and make you wear a gown and then try and catch you out essentially there is no uh from my experience of doing exams when i was um younger the difference as well is it's not about a specific answer is expected but you have an open-ended question as you just said alex and and you have to apply it to an industry of your choice which is very likely to be the company you work for but doesn't have to be um so my paper will be very different to jonathan and claire and we all have the opportunity to to reflect on like what we've learned and also the work we do on a day-to-day basis which i quite enjoyed so far um yeah and i would say i'd say i would reassure you damian that i i've done the the the admissions and the marking on some of the exams and we've yet to have anyone fail on any module and that's not because we've let people off lightly it's because they've just delivered and that's probably because we put the right filtration at the top to make sure that we had people on the course who had the right combination of industry knowledge and basic academic experience so i think that you should you should be reassured that if we were to accept someone to a course it would be because we felt that they had the right background to not fail at the exams and indeed to thrive in them um questions just to add to that on the previous point i think one of the unique things about the assessment strategy here is that you're able to answer from the perspective of your chosen organization so if you're you're able to apply the learnings directly to influence strategy um in the place that your training skills for or in our perspective um from the perspective of customers who may be purchasing ai solutions from us so it's directly actionable um arafein's asked a question about ai and ar and var and that's my personal love by the way um because i come from the entertainment industry and the answer is yes we've had multiple sessions which have looked at that from different perspectives including the entertainment industry this week that's funny enough we're about to have a session on the use of ai in the video games uh creation industry we've got an interviewer who's the head of ai at riot games in california so yes we're super interested in that field absolutely question from shira and with the field of ai evolving rapidly some of the knowledge in ai comes with the expiration date how does the program lend itself to getting in lifelong learning eg executive mba provides an option to have a lifelong elective learning i'll take the first bit of that so i've worked out at that point as well for myself too it's a very good point um and uh so what i've done is created a kind of ongoing cohort of people who've done the course or on the course and i'm going to run uh events between their modules such that people who are both on the course and to finish the course can attend those events so we've called it the oxford aio project and we will be you know encouraging our alumni to stay involved essentially and because of course you're right the the learning will continue um kate from a more formal perspective is does the ex does does this program differ in any way from the exact mba in terms of lifelong elective learning um well i think the um sort of as i've touched on earlier on in the session the sort of the level of learning is um is pitched at the same level um the sort of diplomas originally as kind of an original portfolio were born a little bit out of the um executive mba and the ai diploma is a little bit different and in that um the executive mba program was launched and sort of long enough ago that ai wasn't necessarily sort of a founding principle and kind of a founding and yeah i'm actually i'm sorry to interrupt but i'm actually running the executive mba ai course it's a one week module so it's you know on the face of it a quarter of the ai content that this is sorry to interrupt no no that's fine um but i mean i think as well something that um that is covered as part of this program is um sort of i'm starting to look into the future and to think about kind of how um technology is going to develop um and i think and um and somebody from the panel might want to step in on this i don't know but there's also um sort of an um an idea of thinking about future proofing what you're doing as well and so thinking about kind of how something and exists at the moment what you need at the moment and but also you know how that system is going to need to develop how those structures are going to need to develop and and so sort of you know and kind of psychologically as well as practically building that into the thinking that you're doing around these systems and around these um kind of processes and it's um and i'm sure um point is really good is a really good one i think you know ai is extremely rapidly evolving and and things do change um so you know you could realistically be taking a program of education i'm sure every year from now into the future um well i think i think that we've we've tried to build into the course structure enough of the philosophy of the subject for that to be translatable across um multiple years rather than just focusing on this week's software du jour or what have you from a senior perspective i think that's the benefit of it not um being a fundamentally technical program as well and because the technology is is quite often the first thing to be superseded um and if you're working from a strategic and from a business management from a leadership perspective the um the psychology and the philosophy is the stuff that will take you kind of um forward kind of regardless of that and um throughout those kind of additional processes of change in transition claire you're in government um you know they say ai is the new electricity you know in the in meaning that it's applicable to all facets of life and all facets of the government how do you approach the future proofing of what you're doing from with from an ai perspective i think a little bit of this is actually covered in the last module which was you know how do we set up an innovation strategy um that helps us to sort of try and uh keep scanning for what's at the sort of technology edge and uh work out the point at which um technologies are sufficiently kind of mature to be sort of confidently implemented into our business and so i think the course has really helped uh you know used to run r d programs that really to think about okay what does this mean in the ai context and how do i think about this not just in terms of you know the tech but also um how mature are they other things that will need to be in place to enable that tech to be influenced well so how clear are we around the kind of governance and compliance regimes about where we abuse ai and how far is our whole you know workforce um equipped with the skills and understanding to uh know where ai is going to be sort of well used and where it's not appropriate so i think that's been a really uh um you know really good bit of the court i think it's well covered and uh and you that's that's less about personal learning and more about how you think about building an organizational sort of um learning capacity on ai yeah so i need to ask the question does the course cover only ai i guess you mean only kind of pure ai what does it cover management of ai projects and design to execution well this afternoon i've got a meeting with um the head of ai at bt british telecom and he's going to join next week to talk about how they've taken ai projects right through a life cycle if you will um we've had people from medical technology companies talking similarly so yes we do have definitely focused on implementation and management of ai projects and designs for execution hope that helps um dawn when you when you go forth into your um entrepreneurial stock market listed sort of gaming to tech world what do you think you'll take away from this course that would be helpful to you in that i think having those meaningful conversations with people uh from the data and ai side one side of it you know if during this course i've actually hired a head of data science so being able to sit there and interview with you know with with with a with a credible knowledge to have a credible understanding of what they do it was one part the other bit to take forward is how you bring it into the into the um into the business for in a sympathetic way to to people because having that understanding that ai can be scary to people and you you want to you don't want to disenfranchise your workforce you want to help them grow and move it so how to not only select how to execute it in the appropriate way the augmentation of ai is a big part of this in the course of how we use it alongside human skill sets and how to empower employees and actually the business itself and also looking from a customer perspective and to be respectful for the customer and how you use ai so all these uh things that are very um based on you know technical principles but then taken further into how they actually interact with the different stakeholders is of course you've actually brilliantly answered abhishek's question which was how do you navigate the the kind of um internal bridges between the business strategy teams and the ai teams and i actually think this course is probably designed perhaps inadvertently but designed to help with that in the sense that you can learn the language of the data science people and the ai people such that even from a sort of broad management perspective if you would be able to have a meaningful conversation with them absolutely and i think that that is very true and i think the the depth would go into the technical side of the course was enough for me but enough me to have a you know a sensible conversation but i think people shouldn't underestimate the the reading around the course that you have to do as well and it's it's not sure it's actually makes everything easier and you get more from the course so the reading material that's given with the course isn't it's not hugely expensive but it is deep enough to make you come into the course able to have proper conversations and and take away more and build on what you've learned in in the lectures which i think is an important part of it so the instruction of course adds to all that the takeaways as you as you've asked perfect okay well let's let's let's um let's go once more around the room finally to wrap it all up um if anyone has any further questions just let us know but just um just let me ask the same question to everyone sort of what what what will you take away from the course that you feel might be useful to you in your in your chosen field and start stop perhaps with you kristen um thanks for thanks for going to me first um i mean the one thing i is just the connectivity to so many different ideas and different aspects of the ecosystem that claire was mentioning and albert wasn't mentioning you just think of you think of um that ecosystem differently so i think that's that's probably my biggest takeaway okay okay um nitin just before we go i'm going to come to albert next but nitin um ai and mml applications are growing in every section from banks to governments definitely from this panel does this course allow participants to deep dive about aiml use cases for specific industry verticals absolutely it does i think everyone's probably already told you that um uh that that's what uh they do if not least in the assignments actually fun enough and if i think when when i came to read the assignments from that i think the 29 people who had done them in the first module they were all specific industry vertical use cases deep deep dived um as you describe it in the tin so absolutely yes you would that would absolutely allow you to do it coming back to you albert what what what even what's the thing that you will take away from the course you think might be the most useful to you um i think again it's touching on the issue of culture and organizational readiness and that readiness is not just about or do we i mean there's a lot there's a lot in readiness and making sure that you were the right data and you know that's clean data and all that sort of stuff to be able to deliver the ai but readiness goes beyond that it's also looking at do you have the right leadership in place do you have the right people in place are people ready for this ai it's not just a tool that you can just sort of throw in without it will change how you fundamentally operate so you have to be thinking of how all the paths sort of join together and you have to really think about it and you have to get all the different voices around the table talking about it because if you don't it won't work you can have a great tool that just fails to land because you didn't do all the other work around it so yeah that's been really um you know that's really come out for me in the program um from shiram to clarify do you get access to the advanced ai researchers at oxford yes actually you do so for example this week coming up module four we've got michael osborne who is one of the guys who wrote the book on machine learning he's he's speaking for two hours on i think next friday so if you google him he's really one of the big thinkers in the world about machine learning um my colleague andrew steven who couldn't make this call is a very big um user of ai in martech research marketing technology research and has published many academic papers and also has a spin out business in the field of um essentially using maths to um to look at the social graph and figure out what how brands are going to evolve over the subsequent six months which is a very successful startup um so yes absolutely there are many people at oxford working on ai in many fields and we try to bring in a good selection of them jonathan what are you going to take away from the course i think there's a great question from the audience about trying to gain a lifelong learning and how to avoid an exploration day and i think a lot of the advancements we've seen in technology it's particularly around classifiers are relatively incremental and one of the first things we covered on the course is why is that evolution happening is it the ubiquity of data or lowering the cost of data storage and understanding the economic theory that underpins this i think does fundamentally shift your perspective so that you can prepare for uh future developments of technology how to remain competitive yeah thanks okay i'm claire this comes to you so so uh from your um government perspective what what what do you think having been on the course has helped to it so i think it's it's the rolodex you know that you get from being it's it's having now um a sense of you know a whole fleet of you know academic specialists in their field um people in business and all sorts of parts of you know industry you're working on this stuff it's that it's you know the cohort and the course it's um you know it's the teaching stuff and i think right you know we're trying to solve this kind of problem where can i go to try and get um a sounding board or a different perspective or you know to play something else i think that's the kind of invaluable uh piece and um i think it's also why you know for you know for cohorts and building those relationships over time is just uh you know such a such a powerful thing to do and so that would be you know the the content itself is fantastic but it's that it's that network yeah i agree with that i mean having been having been to oxford a few times in different ways i i think it's actually the network effect that is the most important thing about oxford in fact any college but particularly oxford um i started with alexa and we finished with alexia um alexia what how how do you feel the course has helped you or what might you take away from the course back to the fashionable world of um that there might be abuse in the 2020s so i think i would say three things the first one is i got a real understanding now of the business of data and machine learning and how it applies to a company like mine like a big consumer good company so for me it's i call that real technical understanding of the economics of it second which is maybe less in the day-to-day for my job today but definitely top of the agenda of my company and a lot of companies it's the essex of it which we've extensively covered in the course and like just from a personal perspective i find extremely interesting and then third maybe to claire's point as well is the people i'm i feel very lucky and grateful to have met such a nice cohort of of people that i hope i'll stay in touch with in the future i definitely will because i think it really enriched the world experience um to meet new people with different backgrounds to be able to share experiences different perspectives so for me that really adds a lot to them to the actual program great thank you and niddy your question on data governance yes that does come up a lot comes up in every module we don't have a specific class on the on the sort of where we go through the acronyms one by one but we do almost every class that we teach at some level features uh data governance because it's so fundamental to the ethics of ai and the practicalities of ai in general so absolutely yes we do um kate did you have any final sort of procedural points you wanted to mention to people before we wrap it up um just to um to say that kind of um as ever i am ready and waiting to hear from anybody and who is um is interested in the program and i know there are some people on the call um who have uh started an application already and so if and if anybody is kind of working and towards uh submitting uh we have an application deadline and that's coming up on the 6th of december and so that's a good one to um to aim for and but obviously if um if you'd like to learn any more and if you have any questions i am always available and my email address is here and but also feel free to reach out on them linkedin as well if um if that would be helpful um i'd just like to say and a really big thank you again to um to our panelists as well and and to alex for um for joining us and as they've um kind of i think all touched on our um our final module and for the deployment program this year is um is taking place next week so i'm really looking forward to seeing everybody back at the business school um and then you know we'll be um we'll be full steam ahead then for and for a launch again in them uh february brilliant just before we get so i want to thank thank everybody uh for especially our current cohort for being so kind and participating don has got his hand raised do you want to say the closing point on it better be good where's don digger yes oh just need to ask him can't hear don oh well we've lost on i'm sorry about that i don't know what's happened to him um so i'm going to say goodbye on behalf of everybody thank you to all our guests thank you bubble to the people who from around the world who've taken time out to join in i can see the questions are still coming but we have to wrap it up so so do feel free to oh what's happened sorry don go ahead now i was just going to say that on this course that as an individually often question whether it's that you got the time to do it and for me personally everything the uh right the co-worker said about the takeaways i think one of the biggest things is coming to oxford and being challenged again for after a while coming back to study and to be able to think critically and be challenged by not only by the professors but by a cohort that actually takes you he takes into the other bits of your workplace as well so you start thinking critically and you don't just take things for granted and i think that for me has been a takeaway which i think is is sometimes not really recognized as taking the time to do this course for yourself yeah i think that's a really good point and i often when i go into these classes i always think god i just want to be doing a course all the time it's like yeah it looks like we've had some really nice feedback in the chat so thank you very much to all the participants for that again do you get in touch if you need to thanks again to alexia jonathan claire albert kristen and don thanks kate and we look forward to seeing some of you in 2022 thank you

2021-11-20 02:52

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