Qualcomm Head of AI & ML Product Management Dr. Vinesh Sukumar

EPISODE SUMMARY

During Vinesh Sukumar’s colorful career he has worked at NASA, Apple, Intel, and a variety of other companies, before finding his way to Qualcomm where he is currently the Head of AI/ML Product Management. In today’s conversation, Vinesh shares his experience of developing the camera for the very first iPhone and one of the biggest lessons he learned from working with Steve Jobs. We then discuss what his current role entails and the biggest challenge that he has with it, Qualcomm’s approach to sustainability from a hardware, systems and software standpoint, and his thoughts on why edge computing is so important.

EPISODE NOTES

During Vinesh Sukumar’s colorful career he has worked at NASA, Apple, Intel, and a variety of other companies, before finding his way to Qualcomm where he is currently the Head of AI/ML Product Management.

In today’s conversation, Vinesh shares his experience of developing the camera for the very first iPhone and one of the biggest lessons he learned from working with Steve Jobs. We then discuss what his current role entails and the biggest challenge that he has with it, Qualcomm’s approach to sustainability from a hardware, systems and software standpoint, and his thoughts on why edge computing is so important.Key Points From This Episode:

• An overview of Vinesh’s career trajectory, including his experiences at NASA, Apple, and Intel.
• The focal area of Vinesh’s PhD.
• Challenges that Vinesh faced while working on cutting edge technology for camera phones.
• Some of the early AI applications that were used in smartphone cameras.
• The most important factors to consider when developing cameras for phones.
• Valuable lessons that Vinesh learned from working with Steve Jobs.
• What Vinesh’s role as Head of AI/ML Product Management at Qualcomm consists of.
• Why optimization is one of the biggest technical challenges that Vinesh faces in his role at Qualcomm.
• The four buckets of MLOps.
• Vinesh explains why edge computing is so important.
• Benefits of building intelligence into devices rather than requiring a connection to the cloud.
• Qualcomm’s approach to scalability.
• Why Vinesh is excited about cognitive AI.

Tweetables:“Camera became one of the most important features for a consumer to buy a phone. Then visual analytics, AI, deep learning, ML really started seeping into images, and then into videos, and now the most important consumer influencing factor to buy a phone is the camera.” — Vinesh Sukumar “Reaction time is much better when you have intelligence on the device, rather than giving it to the cloud to make the decision for you.” — Vinesh Sukumar Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:Vinesh Sukumar on LinkedInQualcomm