Say hello to Oliver and the first AI Generation
It’s June 2023 and Oliver Sandgren is graduating in Economics at the University of Lund, Sweden’s oldest academic institution founded in 1666. In his final year, he has worked hard with his thesis while at the same time gaining valuable hands-on experience of AI automation for the automotive retail industry. Working with Phyron AI at the company’s head office in Stockholm he also spent three months at the company’s tech hub in Dubai.
Hi Oliver, good luck with your exams. When and how did you first learn about AI?
As long as I can remember I have been interested in math and its various implications such as computer games. I have also spent a lot of time with computer-generated music. At senior high school, maybe five or six years ago I got in touch with AI in the form of AlphaGo and game theory. Why the game of poker is much more difficult for AI algorithms to learn than chess, and so on. I guess I’m just the curious kind.
So, based on these personal interests of yours, what career plans did you have?
I didn’t really know what to do. Like virtually everybody else at school I found the new AI tools, like GPT very useful but I didn’t think of it as a job, and there didn’t seem to be that many job opportunities. Then I heard about Phyron through a relative and applied for and got a summer job in 2022 ... a summer job that later evolved into a regular part-time employment. Then full time ...
What, exactly, are you doing at Phyron?
Initially I helped out with some market research, fact finding about the automotive business in several countries. Then I was getting into Customer Success management, and a statistics project. I also spent little over three months at Phyron’s tech centre in Dubai. Working in so many different technical and service areas was both fun and educational. You really get to understand the business that way, and also get to know the people.
Dubai, huh? That’s pretty exotic for a first job. What did you do there, exactly?
Most important I learned a lot about Phyron’s AI solution, working directly under the company’s Chief Technical Officer. Dataflows ... new products and features ... implementations ... troubleshooting ... And both in Stockholm and in Dubai I enjoyed interacting with our tech guys in South East Asia and the sales teams in the various countries.
What about life in Dubai in general?
It’s a very special environment for sure, and much more west-oriented than I expected. An incredible mix of people from different parts of the world, extremely energetic and with a strong focus on innovation and business success.
It’s also a very positive and welcoming place. I really enjoyed my time there.
