While watching movies, some enjoy the storyline, while others enjoy the making. Young Veer Shandilya caught his attention in the technological aspect of fiction in Sci-fi movies. His interest paved the way to becoming the youngest Junior Data Scientist (AI) at Clevered.com globally at 11. Clevered is an organization that offers tailored coding AI programs for kids and teens. "Another factor that made me interested in AI was the sight of machines working and gathering different kinds of data and getting more efficient results and high accuracy out of it", said Veer in a conversation with INDIAai.  

Born and brought up in the UAE, Veer started learning coding at 8. Clevered provided him with an online internship at the University of Oxford. At the age of 11, he developed a passion to innovate and solve real-world problems. 

The Junior Data Scientist program was initially assigned for 14+ years. "They were kind enough to accept me to this comprehensive program since I completed the advanced Python course and did the internship at Oxford. The program lasted for about 8 to 10 months and had three different modules", added Veer. Juggling his school work with the program, Veer completed the course within eight months.  

Working with AI 

In the UAE, some magazine articles gained Veer's attention. "Words such as AI and machinery caught me reading", says Veer. Though basic coding was part of his school curriculum, he self-learned with the help and support of his parents. "My parents explain concepts in simple words, which helps me understand them easily". 

Over the years, Veer has worked on several projects. For example, Music Recommender with Top 50 Spotify music datasets preprocessed using different tools and functions, Clustering countries into continents based on the latitudes and longitudes, Facial Recognition with Emotions, Fake News Detector, Sentiment Analysis, E-commerce Customer Tracking, etc. are some of his key works with AI.  

During his internship in Oxford for four months, Veer assisted a senior researcher at the university. He chose different projects in Data Science and presented them to him during this online program. According to Veer, it was a good four months of learning.  

Veer's interest does not confine to Artificial Intelligence and tech. Like any other school-going kid, he also enjoys drama and swimming. In 2021, Veer also authored a book, 'Time Travellers Journey to Mayan'. Veer enjoys writing, but technology is something that he is more interested in. Mayan culture, according to him, was much simpler to understand. "While I was 6, I learned about Mayan. The information regarding the Mayan culture got me thinking about where I could use it. That is how I developed the story", stated Veer talking about his publication. The book comprises several exciting activities as well as stories. 

Enhancing security 

"AI would not have much power without data", says Veer. He has high regard for increasing the quality of data to enhance the performance of the models. Thereby humans could involve themselves in other jobs while machines can complete tasks quickly and efficiently. Veer agrees that data breaches are one of the growing concerns of organizations across the world. In his opinion, subject experts of data security should take a serious look into this matter as data will be driving our future.  

Even after being born and brought up in the UAE, Veer love and respect India and its culture. He understands that many are unaware of the AI enhancements in the country. In his opinion, to have an inclusive AI development, people should be taught about AI and other emerging technologies as it will be necessary for the future. "People who want to learn about AI, I would recommend them to go to Clevered.com and learn it from there", says Veer.  

"All of the things I have achieved are just a few milestones of my learning journey", stated Veer when asked about his plans. Moving ahead in life, Veer looks forward to exploring the hardware side of AI. He believes that since he has an end-to-end view of AI, he can build solutions to it quickly and get more ideas.