Aaron Colak — ML and NLP in Experience Management

Aaron Colak — ML and NLP in Experience Management

Author: Lukas Biewald August 26, 2022 Duration: 50:00

Aaron Colak is the Leader of Core Machine Learning at Qualtrics, an experiment management company that takes large language models and applies them to real-world, B2B use cases.

In this episode, Aaron describes mixing classical linguistic analysis with deep learning models and how Qualtrics organized their machine learning organizations and model to leverage the best of these techniques. He also explains how advances in NLP have invited new opportunities in low-resource languages.

Show notes (transcript and links): http://wandb.me/gd-aaron-colak

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⏳ Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

00:57 Evolving from surveys to experience management

04:56 Detecting sentiment with ML

10:57 Working with large language models and rule-based systems

14:50 Zero-shot learning, NLP, and low-resource languages

20:11 Letting customers control data

25:13 Deep learning and tabular data

28:40 Hyperscalers and performance monitoring

34:54 Combining deep learning with linguistics

40:03 A sense of accomplishment

42:52 Causality and observational data in healthcare

45:09 Challenges of interdisciplinary collaboration

49:27 Outro

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Connect with Aaron and Qualtrics

📍 Aaron on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-r-colak-3522308/

📍 Qualtrics on Twitter: https://twitter.com/qualtrics/

📍 Careers at Qualtrics: https://www.qualtrics.com/careers/

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💬 Host: Lukas Biewald

📹 Producers: Riley Fields, Cayla Sharp, Angelica Pan, Lavanya Shukla

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Lukas Biewald hosts Gradient Dissent: Conversations on AI, a series that moves beyond theoretical discussions to examine how artificial intelligence is actually built and deployed. Each episode features a direct, unscripted talk with a leading practitioner-you’ll hear from engineers and researchers at places like NVIDIA, Meta, Google, Lyft, and OpenAI. The focus is on the tangible challenges and breakthroughs they encounter, from initial research to the complex reality of putting models into production. This isn't about abstract futures; it's a grounded look at the decisions shaping the field right now. Biewald, bringing his perspective from Weights & Biases, steers conversations toward the practical trade-offs and collaborative efforts that define modern AI work. For anyone in technology or business who wants to understand the mechanics behind the headlines, this podcast offers a rare, candid window into the process. You’ll come away with a clearer sense of how ideas become functional systems and what it really takes to operate at the cutting edge.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

Gradient Dissent: Conversations on AI
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