AI At the Forefront of Media and Entertainment

Malav Shah, a Data Scientist II at DIRECTV, has an interesting career journey in machine learning (ML). He initially studied information technology but developed an interest in AI during his undergraduate years. After completing his Master's degree in Computer Science with a specialization in ML from Georgia Tech, he joined AT&T and later moved to DIRECTV. At DIRECTV, Malav applies modern ML techniques to deliver innovative entertainment experiences. The company's ML organization is structured as a center of excellence responsible for solving problems and developing solutions for stakeholders while defining the infrastructure that these teams will use. Key areas of focus include content intelligence, recommendation engines, computer vision, natural language processing (NLP), and monitoring model performance in real-time to address concept drift issues. Malav advises new data scientists to focus on understanding the underlying data and business impact rather than obsessing over perfect metric scores right away. He also highlights the evolving MLOps and ML infrastructure space as an exciting era for machine learning innovation.