5 minutes on Machine Learning with Pradeesh
QRC’s Machine Learning Tutor and Tech Ambassador, believes that artificial intelligence (AI) technology can help alleviate some pressure on Queenstown’s hospitality and tourism industry. The 16-week course he teaches tells participants about AI within New Zealand and how they can utilise it. Pradeesh completed a PhD in Computer Science at the University of Otago and has been teaching the course since November last year.
He refers to himself as a tech evangelist and believes that AI won’t take jobs away, but rather make things easier – he wants us to harness technology and upskill ourselves to use it to progress. Some examples he gives on how businesses can utilise AI are through booking systems, creating loyalty programmes where systems can recognise regular customers, and to help translate or cater to different markets – AI can help to translate menus or allow those that speak English as a second language to navigate websites and make bookings.
“There are so many unknowns because we do not know what we don’t know,” says Pradeesh, “I highly recommend that people, especially business owners, who want to upskill or understand how AI could help their business to take a course or to have a chat. Just come in and understand what AI could actually do to help your business – AI by itself can’t do anything, but with input from a human we could do lots of interesting things.”
Some people and businesses may be resistant to embracing AI and new technology as they think it will take jobs away or remove that human touch. Pradeesh says that as it stands, AI can’t “think outside the box” and is there to work in conjunction with humans, not totally independently.
“It shouldn’t be used as a crutch; it should be used as a tool. I can understand the fear for a lot of people – there’s one thing AI can’t really take away from us, and that is our human ingenuity in the way we think outside the box. They can’t think, so machines are very good at analysing patterns and they can give you insights. We can use AI as a partner to do the heavy lifting and give us insights, but we use our human intuition and intelligence to make sense of what the AI says and advance ourselves. I can understand that there may be resistance, but it’s important to understand that AI has its limitations,” says Pradeesh.
