Niki Parmar shares her experience on moving to modern AI Pioneer
Niki Parmar collaborated with Google and emerging as the youngest member of her team-and the only one without a PhD.
For Niki Parmar, it was a blow when she couldn’t make it into the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). For many Indian students, IIT is the ticket to a dream career. But for Niki, that door closing pushed her onto a different path.
She recalled, that’s it and missed her chance. But then she realized that if she can’t take the traditional route, she will go for her own.
Precisely that’s what she did. From teaching herself artificial intelligence (AI) in her Pune family’s small home to rising as the youngest and only non-PhD member of Google’s AI research team at 24, Niki has carved her own space in one of the most transformative fields of our time.
Niki co-authored the groundbreaking “Attention Is All You Need” paper, which laid the foundation for the transformer model-a fundamental building block behind modern AI systems like ChatGPT.
Notably, Nikki is now the co-founder of Essential AI and is putting to use her expertise in AI to create tools that help businesses work faster and smarter. Notedly, the startup is backed by Google, Nvidia, and AMD.
Growing up in a lower-middle-class family in Pune, Niki was always curious. “There wasn’t any soul to guide her into engineering or AI,” So, she had to figure it out by herself.
Her parents encouraged her to explore her interests, leading Niki to coding and building web apps independently. She went on to add that she was always tinkering, making an attempt to understand how things worked.
Niki owes it to her mother who was responsible for her drive to carve her own path. Once her mother dreamed of emerging as an architect but couldn’t pursue it due to circumstances in life.
That unfulfilled ambition left a mark on Niki. “My mom always pushed me to chase what I wanted,” Niki recalls. “She couldn’t follow her own dream, but she ensured I had the freedom to pursue mine.”
The setback of not getting into IIT didn’t derail her. Instead, she enrolled in the Pune Institute of Technology and began teaching herself AI. There wasn’t anyone walking on her through it. Adding further that she just dove in, learning by doing-taking online courses and working on side projects.
Her early foray into AI wasn’t guided by a mentor or a roadmap-it was driven by pure curiosity and a desire to push beyond the limits of what she knew.
Niki had a financial Leap of Faith as after graduation, she knew she wanted to pursue a Master’s degree in AI in the U.S., but it wasn’t easy. She had secured a loan from HDFC Bank, but things took a turn when she landed in the U.S…
She arrived, and her dad called to tell her that the bank wasn’t releasing the funds.
“I had no money, no place to stay, and no idea how she will pay for tuition.”
Her father and uncle scrambled to borrow money from friends and family to keep her afloat amidst those early months. “It was a huge sacrifice,” Niki says, clearly moved. “My dad wouldn’t have done that for himself, but he ensured she could keep going.”
Notwithstanding the uncertainty, Niki pushed forward and her talent wasn’t unnoticed-her professor sponsored her second year, and she secured an internship that allowed her to pay off the loans before she even graduated.
Niki went on to admit that at first It was a little intimidating. But it was also an incredible learning experience as she was constantly surrounded by people pushing the boundaries of what AI could do.
Not content with sticking to her assigned tasks, Niki started delving deeper into the emerging transformer model on her own initiative. No one suggested her to work on it,” and she just wanted to see how far it could go.
Noteworthily her self-driven work paid off. Niki applied the Transformer architecture across different modalities, including images, audio, and even 3D vision, pushing the boundaries of what AI models could achieve.
Even after co-authoring the influential Transformer paper, Niki doesn’t believe she’s “made it.” Her drive comes from a place of constant curiosity. “There’s always more to learn,” she says. She doesn’t want to be remembered just for the Transformer model. I’m always looking for the next challenge.”
For Niki, AI is about exploring the technology’s untapped potential and their istill in the early stages,
In clip she says that There’s so much more to explore, and she desires to be part of that future.
News Edit KV Raman
