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Марія БровінськаAI Eng
25 February 2025, 09:00
2025-02-25
“So far, the biggest threat to businesses and people is other people, in whose hands any tool or technology can turn into a weapon.” Blitz interview with AI expert Ciklum
We continue the series of materials on the features of the use of artificial intelligence in Ukrainian IT companies. Today’s speaker is Oleg Panichev, Expert Research Engineer at Ciklum. He started by developing algorithms for digital processing and analysis of medical signals. While still at university, Oleg worked at his first job at the Ukrainian company Yutas, which specializes in the development of medical equipment. In parallel, the AI specialist was engaged in scientific research, in particular, the analysis of electroencephalograms for predicting epileptic seizures.
Over time, the specialist began to notice that machine learning methods were increasingly being used in scientific articles instead of traditional digital signal processing methods. «Previously, event forecasting was based on setting thresholds for certain signal parameters without using cross-validation methods. Realizing the promise of new methods, while working on my dissertation, I began to study machine learning and participate in competitions on the Kaggle platform,» he told dev.ua.
Oleg has been working with AI for over eleven years now and has experience solving a wide variety of problems, from working with tabular data to deep learning for computer vision and GenAI. He talked about what he does at Ciklum and how the company integrates AI tools into its projects. The specialist also gives practical advice to those who plan to study and work with AI.
We continue the series of materials on the features of the use of artificial intelligence in Ukrainian IT companies. Today’s speaker is Oleg Panichev, Expert Research Engineer at Ciklum. He started by developing algorithms for digital processing and analysis of medical signals. While still at university, Oleg worked at his first job at the Ukrainian company Yutas, which specializes in the development of medical equipment. In parallel, the AI specialist was engaged in scientific research, in particular, the analysis of electroencephalograms for predicting epileptic seizures.
Over time, the specialist began to notice that machine learning methods were increasingly being used in scientific articles instead of traditional digital signal processing methods. «Previously, event forecasting was based on setting thresholds for certain signal parameters without using cross-validation methods. Realizing the promise of new methods, while working on my dissertation, I began to study machine learning and participate in competitions on the Kaggle platform,» he told dev.ua.
Oleg has been working with AI for over eleven years now and has experience solving a wide variety of problems, from working with tabular data to deep learning for computer vision and GenAI. He talked about what he does at Ciklum and how the company integrates AI tools into its projects. The specialist also gives practical advice to those who plan to study and work with AI.
What are your responsibilities, what tasks does the company set for you?
— Among my responsibilities at Ciklum:
Consulting clients on the implementation of AI, machine and deep learning, as well as GenAI;
Participation in pre-sale activities;
Conducting technical interviews and training colleagues;
Working on client projects.
Since I have significant experience in R&D, I currently work mostly on complex projects where it is necessary to quickly plan experiments and develop Proof of Concept to test hypotheses.
Can you boast about the results of your work — which processes were optimized thanks to AI? Do you have an estimate of the savings in resources (time, money, human capital) thanks to the implementation of AI?
— Since Ciklum is an outsourcing company, the projects are very diverse. For some clients, AI helps increase the market value of the company, for others, it helps optimize operational processes.
A prime example is the development of an antivirus solution for a client who needed to quickly scan large volumes of files. Existing solutions were too expensive or slow. Our development instead enabled scanning millions of files per day, which increased the company’s value to investors and created a new proposition for customers.
What AI tools are currently actively used in the company and for what? Do you develop your own AI solutions (if so, what are they and what are they used for)?
— Usually, the use of AI tools depends on the clients and their permission to use them. We actively use ChatGPT, Claude, and Copilot. I personally prefer ChatGPT for preparing and criticizing texts and presentations, structuring information, and writing code. As for using AI for our own developments, we have several models in the works, but it’s too early to talk about them.
Will AI be able to replace programmers? And creatives? What do you think about the fact that a new profession is already emerging — prompt engineer?
— It’s too early to talk about a complete replacement of the professions of both programmers and creatives. At the same time, tools like ChatGPT have become an important part of the workflow, and a significant difference is already noticeable between those who use them and those who are still avoiding them.
Regarding prompt engineering, I believe that it is not a separate profession, but a useful skill that will become integral to various specialties, similar to computer skills in the past.
Do you share the view that AI is to some extent a threat to businesses and even humanity? How can this be prevented and the negative consequences avoided?
— In my opinion, the biggest threat to businesses and people so far is other people, in whose hands any tool or technology can be turned into a weapon. A large number of perceptions about the threat of AI are based on a fairly high level of optimism about the speed of its development. Similarly, back in the 50s and 60s of the last century, many expected that only ten years remained before the creation of robots with intelligence. A similar situation occurs every time another breakthrough or scientific discovery related to AI occurs, which leads to disappointment in the technology and to the so-called «winters» of artificial intelligence. For many businesses, the greater threat is precisely the excessive overheating of the AI market, which could lead to an economic crisis.
Please advise those who want to study AI, what to study, what courses, books, and blogs to pay attention to.
— AI is a fairly broad field of science that includes machine learning methods, artificial neural networks, robotics, natural language processing, and much more. Therefore, first of all, I would advise you to familiarize yourself with them in more detail and choose what interests you the most, since it is impossible to learn everything at once. To start, I always advise taking machine learning courses from Andrew Ng and checking out the deeplearning.ai website, which has a lot of good courses. There are also many good channels on Youtube, I would highlight the two most interesting to me: Two Minute Papers and Andrej Karpathy. I also believe that for a better understanding of AI, it is worth paying attention to less specialized resources, so I would advise you to read «The Sum of Technology» by Stanislav Lem and «Superintelligence» by Nick Bostrom.
«Compared to my previous experience with Matlab and C#, it was like magic.» AI and ML developer at DataArt — on the possibilities of LLM, overconfidence in AI, and the potential for those who master it
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