Gerard Danjou
The Netherlands

"The course team made a fantastic job in really bringing diversity to the examples showing where AI is used."

While working as a Senior Director Global Operations, Gerard Danjou participated in the online course AI in Practice. Read about his experience.

What was your motivation for enrolling in this course/program?
After a career in consumer goods and traditional retail industry, I joined one of the leading E-commerce platforms. I became fascinated by improving search in the E-commerce industry and wanted to understand the role AI would play in the future in E-commerce and what are the considerations that need to be taken into account when deploying E-commerce even further. In my work for a digital market place I see there are still many areas of the user experience that need improvement. I wanted to learn how AI could help improve buyer or seller experience and what are the challenges to consider.

How did/will this course impact your career or life?
The best part of the course for me was to attend the lectures by the teams of various research labs as they shared information on their current research. The course provided a good balance of theory and real cases. It made the topic of AI very practical. Even if some of the research was not directly linked to my industry, it helped me expand my thinking. The course team made a fantastic job in really bringing diversity to the examples showing where AI is used and a variety of research in different type of organisations.

I really enjoyed learning how AI was used in many different industries ranging from medical imaging, to banking, the Dutch police and many more! What I learned from AI at ING helped me enrich my final paper which was on the digital marketplace. With AI capabilities constantly evolving the course made a great effort in presenting not only the benefits of AI but also the challenges.

How was your experience learning online?
I liked that the lectures were not too long and the slides were very clear. I also felt that the course team was readily available to answer questions from the students. Finally, I want to add that I learned a lot from reading the contributions of my fellow students. I also liked learning from the PhD candidates who were so generous in sharing their current research. That helped me get a glimpse of where AI is going in the future.

What advice would you give someone who is thinking of taking a similar course?
The instructors propose many optional readings to dig further. I would really recommend to read these optional articles as they provide more examples and illustrations of the topics discussed and they really reinforce your learning. The additional material has been extremely useful to help me better understand the various topics discussed in the class. I also learned a lot by visiting the company websites of the speakers in order to gain a deeper understanding of AI. Finally, I would recommend keeping to a regular schedule and not falling behind.