“Be curious, be courageous to innovate, be resilient in overcoming challenges, and be humble.”
Who is he?
Dr. Ng Aik Beng is currently a regional manager of NVIDIA AI Technology Centre (NVAITC). His role is an interesting mix of being a technologist, researcher and ecosystem builder in artificial intelligence (AI). Dr Ng’s interest and work include AI augmentation, human AI collaboration and technological innovations in general. Leading his team of researchers and program management office, he promotes AI in the ecosystem through strategic partnerships and collaborations with institutes of higher learning (such as universities and polytechnics), industry and government.
Can you tell us why or what made you decide to enter the technology sector?
“I have been interested in technology since young. As a young person growing up, I was interested in science fiction, fantasy literature and games. As the famous saying goes “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” and ever since then, technology has deeply captured my imagination for all its endless possibilities in making our lives automated, intelligent and even magical. The rest is history, I suppose.”
What is a typical morning at work?
“My morning at work typically involves cycling through three aspects:
(1) Mental stock take of ongoing priorities.
(2) What is no longer a priority and needs to be said “No” to.
(3) What can we do better than yesterday.
And, of course, accompanied by a good cup of coffee and breakfast.”
What are some of the challenges of the job?
“By virtue of how rapidly and dynamically the AI ecosystem is evolving, the nature of work follows suit. The AI revolution reignited about 11 years with no signs of slowing down till date. Hence, the rate of AI innovation and adoption has only accelerated. With so much interest and investments all-round, one of the greatest challenges is to figure out how we can maximise the impact of our work with finite resources. Thanks to a great team and collaborators, we continue to make good progress.”
How do you stay at the forefront of technological advancements and emerging trends in the industry?
“The reality is that no one person can know it all and/or do it all. Staying effectively at the technological forefront is really a collaborative effort of the individual and the team. On the individual front, I am driven and curious to learn more about the latest advancements in AI through a variety of information channels (eg subscribing to relevant newsletter, reading tech blogs, perusing state of the art research papers, etc.).
On the team front, I am fortunate to be in a position where work enables consistent communications with collaborating researchers and a team of research engineers working on various exciting topics in digital twins and foundation models which allows me to simultaneously learn and contribute towards their growth.
Lastly, but not least, being in NVIDIA is a tremendous boon as the environment is filled with people constantly sharing about the latest news on AI advancements and breakthroughs.”
Can you share examples of significant technological innovations or breakthroughs that you find particularly exciting or impactful?
“For me, it is undoubtedly AI powered by deep learning. More specifically, generative AI going forward. In 2017, I was introduced to the transformers AI architecture. In no time, this led towards the development of GPT and what is widely termed as generative AI today.
In summary, generative AI can generate text, images or other types of modalities in response to prompts. At this time of writing, it has demonstrated vast capabilities with use cases such as programming code generation, creative writing and image generation, sequence generation aiding in medicine discovery, synthetic data generation for overcoming data scarcity/privacy challenges, and many more.”
What are some of the main challenges or obstacles that you perceive in the adoption and implementation of new technologies?
“Since the past, acceptance of new technologies (and things in general) is generally impeded by the lack of understanding which can unfortunately lead to fears. This remains largely in effect today. As such, we should continually seek to promote wider and deeper understanding of new technologies to overcome the challenges and progress as an ecosystem on all fronts. Examples include widespread adoption, further advancements, and formulation of relevant regulations.”
Are they specific domains or areas within the technology industry that you consider to have a substantial growth potential, and why?
“As alluded earlier, generative AI has a significant potential in becoming one of the most impactful technology domains in this era. In addition to its increasingly widespread adoption across verticals, generative AI demonstrates a depth of creativity that narrow AI is unable to achieve. This leads us to seriously consider the potential of generative AI being the genesis (at least one of the major factors) towards the achievement of artificial general intelligence in the future.”
How do you foster a culture of innovation within your organisation and what practices do you employ to drive technological advancements?
“A culture of innovation is not built overnight. It takes consistent maintenance once developed. In contributing towards such a culture within the team, we encourage a no-blame culture, open communications, room to try (and fail), and clear overarching team mission. By seeking to provide a good mix of direction and individual flexibility enablement, the team can be more empowered to drive technological advancements while maintaining an united focus at the team level.”
From your perspective, what role does technology play in advancing sustainability and driving positive change?
“This swings both ways. Sustainable technology enabling technology for sustainability. Let us use my industry in AI for illustration. From the sustainable AI perspective, advancements across the full-stack, data centre-scale accelerated AI compute platform (hardware and software) enable a much more power-efficient and time-efficient AI compute solution that overall consumes less in the course of advancing AI. From the AI for sustainability angle, AI models contribute positively towards many environmental initiatives such as climate change predictions and carbon capture storage simulation.”
What were some of the life lessons which you have learned along the way in your career?
“Over time, one of the most impactful life lessons I have learnt is to strive to have and cultivate patience. In being patient, we accord ourselves and people around us the opportunity to hear and to be heard. This is instrumental and could often mean the difference towards being able to work together effectively or not.”
If I was not in my current company / position, I would be a _________?
“This is probably the most difficult question to answer. I remember a time during my youth where I hoped to enroll in a professional culinary school. Perhaps, in another life, I might have become a chef. While that did not happen, I do still enjoy eating and learning to cook simple dishes.”
What advice would you give to individuals seeking to forge a successful career path in the technology industry?
“Be curious, be courageous to innovate, be resilient in overcoming challenges, and be humble. As Aristotle said, “The more you know, the more you realise you don’t know.”
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