Chinmay Abhay Nerurkar Of Microsoft Advertising: How AI Is Disrupting Our Industry, and What We Can Do About It

Artificial Intelligence is no longer the future; it is the present. It’s reshaping landscapes, altering industries, and transforming the way we live and work. With its rapid advancement, AI is causing disruption — for better or worse — in every field imaginable. While it promises efficiency and growth, it also brings challenges and uncertainties that professionals and businesses must navigate. What can one do to pivot if AI is disrupting their industry? As part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Chinmay Abhay Nerurkar.

Chinmay Abhay Nerurkar is a highly respected Engineering Leader, with a proven track record of driving technical excellence and product innovation to deliver business objectives with a People-First approach. He brings over 15 years of diverse experience of delivering market-leading technology products in the AdTech, FinTech and Embedded Software industries. Chinmay is currently a Principal Engineer at Microsoft Inc., leading a multitude of strategic engineering initiatives across the Advertising Org to build the future of Premium Online Advertising Experiences across the web, mobile and connected TV with Petabyte-scale Big Data & the latest in AI/ML.

Chinmay is a passionate career mentor who coaches engineering professionals and senior technology leaders on all-rounded growth. He emphasizes on building an inclusive & empowering team culture, improving engagement and a push for innovation. Chinmay is a sought-out speaker who has presented at major international conferences on responsible use of AI/ML in industry.

Chinmay is a Fellow at the British Computing Society, a Senior member at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and an at-large member if Upsilon Pi Epsilon International Honor Society for Computing and Information Disciplines. Chinmay is an advisor on DevNetwork AI/ML Advisory board and chairs various industry panels. He is currently an Adjunct Faculty at the New York University where he teaches a Masters/PhD level course on Machine Learning for Cybersecurity for Fall’23.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive into our discussion our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path?

From a young age, I knew, I wanted to build great things that touched the lives of many and solved real problems for them. As a kid, I was always tinkering with computers and creating software to build websites or just automate tasks felt like a superpower. After joining the industry and realizing the monumental value you could deliver by bringing together domain data and software engineering, that right there, was a moment of epiphany for me.

If you can take the data pertaining to your problem domain and incorporate it as an input into your product, you’re able to provide a much higher quality of service to the benefit of your customer. This data is analyzed to find patterns and build machine learning models that drive elegant, bespoke AI products for solving those problems. I was hooked. This was going to be my hammer & chisel to help shape a better world.

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

With a mission statement that emphasizes on empowering everyone around the world to accomplish more, I am surrounded by great people on a mission to make an impact using technology and responsible AI. It shows in the company’s long history of creating innovative products that add value to people’s day-to-day lives globally.

At Microsoft Ads, we are building the future of AdTech to provide a premium online experience for everyone across the web, apps and connected TV with a focus on preserving user privacy and consent. Our goal is to connect people with products & services that positively impact their lives. By matching companies to their customers, not just here in the US but globally, high quality advertising benefits these customers and drives global commerce. It’s not just the large brand-name companies that I’m talking about. When we help small businesses reach their local communities by advertising the services they offer, it directly benefits these communities and drives the local economy.

As the products we buy become more digital services as against physical goods in the past, online advertising becomes even more important. Think of online universities and bootcamps offering advanced degrees you can access anywhere around the globe you can access the internet. By connecting students globally to these online education opportunities through advertising we can play a role in democratizing education around the world. We can make a huge, positive global impact in ways not possible not too long ago.

You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

Empathy & drive to make impact: I like to put these two together because, if you have the desire to better our world and intend to solve some of its hardest problems, you have to start by putting people first. You cannot better the world in isolation. You have to be able to put yourself in others’ shoes, see the world through their perspectives and then really collaborate with them to create novel solutions that work for everyone.

Fail fast & iterate: Building great things is hard and often it takes many tries to succeed. You need the courage to fail and the determination to succeed. Fail fast & iterate is about quickly building a version of your product focused on solving a particular problem based on the information you know, then iterating on every failure using what you’ve learnt to improve your product. Lessons learnt at every step of failure are compounded towards bringing success sooner with better-quality outcomes.

Open-mindedness to change: Change in everything is inevitable but it’s especially scary when things change at a fast pace. The recent advances in AI and just the speed at which it continues advance has the potential to completely upend the way we work and travel, how we access services and interact with each other, how we provide and access basic day-to-day services, etc. It challenges our notion of how our world operates creating fear and skepticism in the minds of people towards the change. Being openminded to the drivers of change is like sliding open those mental curtains of fear. It allows me to shift my thought process from skepticism to how I can capitalize on this change, like the advancements in AI, and use it to accomplish better outcomes.

Let’s now move to the main point of our discussion about AI. Can you explain how AI is disrupting your industry? Is this disruption hurting or helping your bottom line?

The AdTech industry, historically, has been a data-rich technology domain that has benefited from adoption of big data techniques and machine learning. With the latest advances in AI we are able to deliver unparalleled ad personalization for users while maintaining their privacy and upholding consent.

AI-powered analytics are helping advertisers gain a better understanding of their target audiences driving superior customer segmentation and product recommendations. Generative AI tools are assisting in creation of customized ads images or videos with language localization using contextual information and advertiser data resulting in increased user engagement and higher conversion rates.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. AI is being employed for ad fraud detection and prevention, automation of A/B testing ad campaign strategies which had to be done manually before, setting up complete ad campaigns based on plain-text prompt instructions from advertisers and so much more. As an industry, we are embracing this AI disruption and building on it.

Which specific AI technology has had the most significant impact on your industry?

Multimodal Generative AI and LLMs have been an absolute game changer for the AdTech industry given how versatile they are at tackling a multitude of use-cases. I mean, just look at remarkable speed at which ChatGPT has been integrated into applications across various industries.

Can you share a pivotal moment when you recognized the profound impact AI would have on your sector?

The AdTech industry has always had to work with large amounts of data and, therefore, has been a very data-driven or ‘AI/ML forward’ industry for a long time. The pivotal moment for me came when GPT-3 was released to the world. We were experimenting with it for various potential applications, and it was just surreal how effective it could be at tackling so many diverse use-cases. Even more advanced models, like the GPT-4, came out not too long after and the world would never be the same again.

How are you preparing your workforce for the integration of AI, and what skills do you believe will be most valuable in an AI-enhanced future?

Every organization of this industry, from engineering & documentation to commercial & sales, is being disrupted by AI. That means every function, every team has the potential to benefit from adopting AI into their workflows and passing on those benefits to our customers through our services. To this effect, we are creating AI-driven tools to better support a team’s functions and training teams on their use. These AI technologies are constantly evolving, and newer AI tools fitting different customer needs are being brought to market everyday. So, there is no “one size fits all” way to integrate AI into every workflow. I think what’s more important than a specific skill is an open mindset to explore these AI tools and a willingness to experiment with them in your work process.

What are the biggest challenges in upskilling your workforce for an AI-centric future?

The breakneck pace at which AI is proliferating our industry certainly makes a lot of people apprehensive. One of the major challenges is to change their perception of AI from something scary and unapproachable which can replace them. You can upskill your workforce only when they are willing to look at AI as a beneficial tool and embrace its use.

Once that’s underway, another challenge relates to quality of the data we feed into AI tools and the veracity of their outputs, especially with the use of generative AI. The old adage of ‘garbage in, garbage out’ applies here. You have to train people to vet the instructions and data they feed into AI tools and ensure that they fit the quality standards and other business constraints. As an example, if you’re asking an AI tool to frame an important business email, you have to provide precise instructions on how it should be formatted, who the intended audience is and what topics should it focus on. You also need to provide correct data and sufficient context for the AI to act upon based on these instructions. It is equally important to verify the tool’s output to ensure that the AI generated email is factually accurate and formatted exactly per your instructions. Training your workforce to do these things effectively is critical to succeeding in the AI-centric future.

What ethical considerations does AI introduce into your industry, and how are you tackling these concerns?

We, as AI practitioners, have a duty to ensure that AI is used for benefit of the general populace in a safe, equitable manner. Every industry participating in this AI-centric future has this on their mind and upcoming regulation like US AI Bill of Rights and EU Artificial Intelligence Act are steps in the right detection here.

The AdTech industry relies on large amounts of data from various sources to deliver unpresented levels of personalization, customer engagement and performance for advertisers. So, one of the key ethical concerns here is the issue of user privacy. There’s a thin line between utilitarian convenience and privacy invasion as we use ever-growing amounts of data to train AI and we have to be careful to stay on the right side of that line. This requires training the workforce on responsible use of AI, instituting privacy safeguards and governance practices around handling sensitive data like Personally Identifiable Information or PII. Access to sensitive data is access-controlled and application use-cases are strictly audited for potential of unethical use. We also heavily rely on cutting-edge privacy preserving techniques like federated learning from data and implementing differential privacy in our systems to mitigate the chances of privacy leakage.

Another concern with use of AI in your services is the risk of perpetuating inherent biases leading to discrimination based on race, gender, socioeconomic status, etc. We take utmost effort in making sure that the data used for training AI is ‘cleaned’ to remove objectionable, hateful, violent content and adheres to our high-quality standards. On the other end, we thoroughly verify the output behavior after every AI update to minimize changes of algorithmic biases in our services.

What are your “Five Things You Need To Do, If AI Is Disrupting Your Industry”?

1 . Embrace AI adoption: The cat is out of the bag now. AI is here to stay and it’s only going to keep getting better. It’s crucial that learn about it, how it affects your industry and integrate it into your workflows. Companies that have been early adopters of the LLMs and Generative AI have clearly demonstrated the value AI has added through their services.

2 . Upskill your workforce: AI is not meant to replace people. It’s meant to be a tool that empowers your employees to achieve more by taking on some of the menial tasks. Companies really need to invest in educating their workforce on AI and how to use it in their workflows.

3 . Experiment with AI integration: AI is still a novel and rapidly evolving field. There’s no one way to use AI or the right AI technology that fits all use cases. It’s important to be openminded and learn to experiment with new AI technologies to see how you can truly benefit from their adoption. Just like ChatGPT keeps evolving and adding more capabilities, companies leveraging ChatGPT, for example, should think about how they can leverage those new capabilities to take on more menial tasks from their workforce and free people up for higher-level creative work.

4 . Focus on Ethical use of AI: AI is a powerful technology and has the potential to change the world as we know it. Every company leveraging AI should think very seriously about the ethical implications of leveraging AI in their products and then ensure that it is benefiting everyone in an inclusive, equitable manner.

5 . Collaborate beyond your industry: The full benefits of AI cannot be reaped in the isolation of industry silos. Think of a car manufacturer that automates their workflows using AI. But they still need to acquire hundreds of parts from various other manufacturers. The parts manufacturers themselves might use AI to automate their workflows but they also procure raw materials from other supplier companies. The interaction between the car manufacturer, the part manufacturers and then their suppliers is a cumbersome logistics management task currently helmed by humans. You have a dependency chain of companies relying on one another for parts or raw materials with humans responsible for managing inventory and ordering new stock when necessary. AI would be an ideal candidate to handle all of these interactions, ensure the supply chain flows smoothly, inventory is managed effectively, and humans can focus on other tasks. Collaborating on cross-industry AI use will streamline a lot of real-world use cases and drive synergy across industries.

What are the most common misconceptions about AI within your industry, and how do you address them?

Owing to its novelty, people often misunderstand what AI is and what it can do. This just leads to misconceptions and fear around proliferation of AI in our day to day lives. It’s important to understand that AI is a tool to help us humans do things better or easier by taking on tedious, repetitive work. We humans will still be responsible for creative thinking and AI will be our assistant.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life?

“The days are long but the decades are short”. It puts things into perspective.

Off-topic, but I’m curious. As someone steering the ship, what thoughts or concerns often keep you awake at night? How do those thoughts influence your daily decision-making process?

We are at an inflection point when it comes to technology and its role in our lives. With every company out there rushing to adopt AI, very soon, AI is going to be part of every product or service we interact with on a day-to-day basis. AI can be a great teacher helping you learn a difficult subject with personalized coursework suited to your style of learning or AI can be a sophisticated online scam artist that steals your identity and money by using your personal data to figure out your blind spots. As experts and leaders in this field, we have a collective responsibility to ensure that it is used ethically for the benefit of all humanity.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

If your industry hasn’t experienced AI disruption yet, know that it’s just around the corner. The pace advancements in AI and what it can do is going to be much faster that what we have seen with the computing world ever before. The quest for Artificial General Intelligence or AGI is on and I’m certain it will be here sooner than we expect. This has a real potential to upend our way of live by virtue of AI taking over a lot of tasks that currently require human involvement. We, as collective humanity, need to prepare ourselves to benefit from this rather than get caught off-guard and be harmed due to this change. I cannot stress enough, we need to start a movement around raising awareness about what AI is, educating them on how to adopt AI as a tool that assists us in solving humanity’s most pressing problems like climate crisis, global food security, democratized access to education and so on. We have a golden opportunity to take a giant leap forward for all of humanity and we all need to collectively participate to make it happen!

These advancements are going to touch almost every day-to-day aspect of our lives including how we work, how we conduct commerce, how we travel, how the services we user daily are provided, etc. We need to be prepared for this disruption in our lives to benefit from AI. Awareness, education, and adoption of AI.

How can our readers further follow you online?

You can find me on LinkedIn

Thank you for the time you spent sharing these fantastic insights. We wish you only continued success in your great work!

About the Interviewer: Cynthia Corsetti is an esteemed executive coach with over two decades in corporate leadership and 11 years in executive coaching. Author of the upcoming book, “Dark Drivers,” she guides high-performing professionals and Fortune 500 firms to recognize and manage underlying influences affecting their leadership. Beyond individual coaching, Cynthia offers a 6-month executive transition program and partners with organizations to nurture the next wave of leadership excellence.