Interview with Prateek Joshi, Founder, Pluto AI - Speaker at Global Predictive Analytics Conf - March 2017 Posted on : Mar 07 - 2017

We feature speakers at Global Predictive Analytics Conference March 27 - 29, 2017 to catch up and find out what he or she is working on now and what's coming next. This week we're talking to Prateek Joshi, Founder, Pluto AI.

Interview with Prateek Joshi

1. Tell us about yourself and your background.
I'm an Artificial Intelligence researcher, a published author of 7 books, and a TEDx speaker. I'm the founder of Pluto AI, a venture-funded Silicon Valley startup building an analytics platform for smart water management. My tech blog (www.prateekjoshi.com) has received 1.3M+ page views from 200+ countries and has 6,600+ followers. I've been an invited speaker at technology and entrepreneurship conferences including TEDx, AT&T Foundry, and Silicon Valley Deep Learning. I have won many hackathon prizes, including at Facebook. I graduated from University of Southern California with a Masters degree specializing in Artificial Intelligence. I was previously at Nvidia and Microsoft Research. You can learn more about me on my personal website at www.prateekj.com.

2. What have you been working on recently?
I have been working on Artificial Intelligence for time-series data. Specifically, I've been exploring how Deep Neural Networks can be used to extract meaningful insights from sensor data.

3. Tell me about the right tool you used recently to solve customer problem?
We have to use a variety of time-series modeling techniques to solve customer problems. I've been actively using Recurrent Neural Networks for that purpose.

4. Where are we now today in terms of the state of Predictive Analytics, and where do you think we’ll go over the next five years?
There's always something new going on in the field of predictive analytics. Given the rate at which data is being generated in today's world, we have to constantly come up with innovative techniques to extract wisdom from that data. In the next five years, we will see predictive analytics and artificial intelligence become way more pervasive. It will have a huge impact on some of the biggest problems facing humanity such as water loss, energy shortage, food wastage, and so on.

5. You’ve already hired Y number of  people approximately. What would be your pitch to folks out there to join your organization? Why does your organization matter in the world?
Artificial Intelligence has been limited to first world problems so far. Pluto's goal is to use it to solve a meaningful problem like the ongoing water crisis. We use cutting edge Deep Learning algorithms to extract wisdom from sensor data in real time. If you want to work on something cool while having a positive impact on the world, come talk to us. 

6. What are some of the best takeaways that the attendees can have from your "Deep Learning for IoT" talk?
Majority of the research in deep learning is focused on image recognition. There are billions of sensors around the world monitoring various things like water flow, temperature, pressure, and so on. These sensors send data to the cloud in real time. My goal is to talk about how deep learning can be used to extract amazing insights from time-series data.  

7. What are the top 5 Predictive Analytics Use cases in enterprises?

- Predictive maintenance (water plants, manufacturing, automotive)
- Risk modeling (utilities, stock market)
- Image recognition (agriculture, self-driving cars)
- Fraud prevention (banking, insurance)
- Demand prediction (energy, ecommerce)

8. Which company do you think is winning the global Predictive Analytics race?
It depends on the domain we are talking about. Predictive analytics is too big for any single company to win it. Companies like Google, Amazon, and IBM are coming up with generic platforms to do predictive analytics. I think the companies building a full solution to solve a meaningful problem will win in their respective domains.

9. Any closing remarks
I'm excited to share Pluto's vision with deep learning enthusiasts. Our mission is to use Artificial Intelligence to solve the water problem and team up with amazing people along the way.