George Iskenderian , director of Big Data and AI / ML at Bell Canada , is putting data and AI / ML at the heart of telecoms . He explains why it ’ s the right decision

F or someone working in the transformative and often speculative world of artificial intelligence ( AI ) and machine learning ( ML ), George Iskenderian is remarkably pragmatic . But that doesn ’ t stop him from being ambitious and , more to the point , successful . His data and AI / ML team at Bell Canada has two patents pending and one being filed after only five years , and has grown from a single person team into more than 100 data scientists and engineers . Iskenderian is very appreciative of his position , “ A big factor to my success is the support and empowerment I received at Bell to establish this world class team especially from Stephen Howe , Bell CTO , Petri Lyytikainen , Network VP and of course every single person on the team .”