Profile
Arunav Das
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About Me:
I live in South East London and as PhD Researcher currently spend most of my time in exploring and experimenting with ethical and responsible applications of Artificial Intelligence models. I love all forms of art & cultural and try to fill my spare time with exhibitions, museums, theatre , sketching as well as culinary adventure of experimental cuisines.
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Like many people members of academia, civic society, corporate world and public service entities, I strongly believe that right now is the best time to get involved with the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in many possible ways.
As we make progress in AI, we also face many unanswered questions that belong to the fields of both Natural Science as well as Social Science. AI is an multidisciplinary approach that not only brings together Mathematics, Physics, Biology disciplines together in the algorithmic model but also Linguistics, Ethics, Epistemology and Metaphysics for debating the right use and purpose of building models. For that reason, I left a career in Banking to become part of the research communities. I have found my Engineering and MSc background to be very useful to make this transition,
I love to try and balance the analytical part of my days with creative arts as well and for that reason, I have taken a special interest on the skyline during sunrise and sunset. London skyline has presented some beautiful views over the past few months. I try to capture them through photos first and then try to draw/sketch them with my interpretations
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My pronouns are:
He/Him
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My Work:
I am currently researching the field of Conversational AI application in a business context. Some of the famous examples of Conversational AI in our daily life includes – Alexa, Siri, Google Home and off late ChatGPT
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AI could be seen as a combination of Logic, Language and Statistics
A lot of research in the past have focussed independently within these domains for e.g. the Expert Systems of 1960s were designed based on Logic. NLP research in the past have focussed on Languages and Machine Learning on statistics linked to Big Data. The boundaries however have started getting blurred as new models and techniques have often combined Logic, Language and Statistics. Google maps could be seen as a good example of such a cross domain approach.
My research focuses on understanding context and intent behind questions (from various sources like chats, emails, phone/videos calls) from users (or customers) of an application that then helps to generate responses in various formats (text, audio, video) to address the queries in a conversational style. Consistency, accuracy and explainability of the responses are key considerations for the research alongside Ethics of using different types of datasets for chosen applications
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My Typical Day:
To be honest I get bored of typical days 🙂 but , I do have a bunch of things that I try to include in my daily rhythm. I am an early riser and in no specific order
30-40 mins of exercise , a few coffees , reading academic papers, books (on AI/Physics, Maths), music , coding , online trainings, writing (articles, essays) . Some days these activities take place at Campus and other days I work from home .
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What I'd do with the prize money:
I would be inclined to assess if the money could be used to fund access to AI application(s) / models for students/schools who want to experiment with them e.g. licence for ChatGPT’s high end version. This might include access to hardware too. I do realise it may not be enough for everyone/everything but I do hope it would be a start of something impactful.
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Education:
I did the equivalent of GCSE , AA levels and B.E. Metallurgical from India.
I also have an MBA with Distinction (Warwick Business School) and MSc Data Science with Distinction (City, University of London)
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Work History:
I used to work in the Banking Sector for couple of decades in various roles in IT, Operations, Risk Management, Client Consulting and Product Management.
Banking has broadly got three sub worlds of Investment Banking, Corporate/Commercial Banking and Retail/Wealth Management. No all banks may have all these business. I used to be part of Corporate and Commercial Banking which deals with providing banking services (Credit , Lending, Transaction Banking) to Business Customers
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Current Job:
I am currently on a full time PhD journey since last year.
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Employer:
Former Employers
Citibank
JPM Morgan Chase
HSBC
Currently at King’s College London
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My Interview
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How would you describe yourself in 3 words?
Aspirational Polymath Maven
What did you want to be after you left school?
Theatre
Were you ever in trouble at school?
yes, once and never again
If you weren't doing this job, what would you choose instead?
I left my Banking career to do Research. I absolutely love science and do not think I want to choose anything else now :-)
Who is your favourite singer or band?
Coldplay
What's your favourite food?
I am a foodie. Love trying the world cuisines and hence do not have a favorite
If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!
1. Winning the Turing Award , 2. Travelling every country in every continent , 3. learning all spoken languages
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