TRAILBLAZER
Larry Muhlstein Artificial Intelligence at Google
Bridging the Gap Between Academia and Industry
E
xperienced machine learning engineer and scientist, Larry Muhlstein, previously specialised in recommender systems and natural language understanding for both research and production. Currently working towards his PhD, Muhlstein works as an Artificial Intelligence Engineer at Google. With a rich educational background, Muhlstein explained that he did not set out to work in the artificial intelligence (AI) field: “I ended up in the field by accident,” he said. “I'm interested in AI because it reflects this beautiful relationship between ideas and almost a philosophy about how the world works and how things can actually have a real impact,” continued Muhlstein. Despite having a keen interest in philosophy, Muhlstein explained that he felt “the tools in this field are very limited as to how they can really reach into the world.” Turning to AI-enabled technology to pursue his career in both 18
February 2022
academia and industry, Muhlstein said: “With AI, we have this tool that allows us to frame things in terms of observations and data. As a result, we can design this tool to reflect what we care about or want to see and so it can then have a real and powerful impact. We've seen the importance of this with the massive increase in the amount of AI being used in the industry in the last 10 years or so.” He added: “My interest stems from both the beauty and power of this technology and how that all ties nicely into society.”
“My interest stems from both the beauty and power of this technology and how that all ties nicely into society”
