Semih Kumluk in conversation with Certnexus

Semih Kumluk is a Digital Training Manager at PwC’s Academy. He designs, develops and delivers custom-designed upskilling programmes in all digital topics including Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Security, Cloud and Blockchain.

Semih talks to Certnexus about the gaps and the future of Artificial Intelligence and how the Certified Artificial Intelligence Practitioner (CAIP) programme can help organisations and individuals in accelerating their digital growth.

What advantages will organisations see in utilizing machine learning and AI to extract value from their data?

As humans, we can consider 2 or 3 parameters at the same time. You will know what I am talking about if you try to visualize 2-D or 3-D scatter charts and think about the 4-D version. Machine Learning algorithms, on the other hand, can process hundreds of parameters at the same time and make this analysis for millions of items. This is extremely useful when we are trying to understand what drives customers to purchase or not purchase, what will our financials look like in the next quarter, what makes our employees leave or stay at the company, how can we optimize our logistics routes or inventory levels or staff task allocations… These are some very critical but difficult business problems in nature due to their complexity which can be solved by using AI.

What are the biggest gaps you see within organisations implementing artificial intelligence and machine learning?

Artificial Intelligence teams mostly, if there are any, sit under IT departments (as expected). They try to apply AI to the problems they can unleash or hear from business leaders or their own problems in optimizing the IT systems. If you look at the business from a wider perspective, there are many opportunities in different parts of the business to which AI can add value, as I shared earlier. Because of the unawareness of what AI can do and how it works, not all parts of the business are thinking about AI implementation ideas and demanding projects from their IT counterparts.

What advantages does an organisation gain by hiring certified candidates?

When you think about all alternative recruitment tools including CV review, interviews, personality assessments, case studies, etc.,… the biggest correlation among these with the actual job performance is observing the candidate completing a hands-on job. Certification provides this assurance. When you hire candidates who are certified by an internationally recognized independent organisation, you know that all the requirements of the certification are met by the candidate and all the theoretical and practical tasks are achieved successfully.

What does CAIP offer to students and organisations?

Coming back to the gaps question, CAIP is not just another regular AI programme. Most AI programmes cover only the Machine Learning and Deep Learning algorithms, but CAIP additionally covers important aspects of becoming an AI practitioner: solving business problems with AI and ethical challenges with AI. These additions enable students and organisations to define opportunities, create a strategy, and jump start with AI projects reinforced by the hands-on parts of CAIP. This distinguishes CAIP to fill the gaps by upskilling AI teams who can implement AI projects and create solutions to business problems.

As part of your journey, you got certified as a CAIP. How did you prepare for the exam, and what recommendations do you have for other people considering this path?

I must say that the CAIP certification exam is not an easy one; you understand how valuable that certificate is when you sit for the exam. I have a background in AI, I read the blueprint and studied the critical parts from the study guide. The blueprint covers the exam content in detail, I would highly recommend checking that and making sure that you know all the topics mentioned in the blueprint. You can attend a training offered by an ATP like us to learn all the exam topics with theoretical background and hands-on activities.

What advice do you have for people considering starting a career in AI?

The first step in having a career in AI is mindset: being very well aware about what AI is, how it works, and most importantly, what are the use cases you can relate to. This will help you define opportunities and create an AI strategy. The next step is improving your knowledge. What needs to be done in order to execute your AI strategy, how algorithms work, which algorithm is the best for your case, and how do we implement them? The final step is developing the skills. At this level you master the algorithms, you gain hands-on experience and you become certified to showcase your skills to employers.

Organisations have choices when selecting training and consulting advisors. What advantages do they have in engaging PwC?

We have completed a countless number of client engagements globally and this makes us unique to relate to various business problems and create use cases for the topics we teach, such as CAIP. We made our contributions to the CAIP content; we reinforced the theoretical background and hands-on Python labs and we created case studies related to each algorithm to see the algorithms in action. This enables our students to relate to their own business problems and ideate how to apply what they learned. We also created a library of additional resources which includes details of the algorithms, thought leadership reports, videos, and articles which we share with our participants to support them in continuing their upskilling journey.