Have you ever typed a question into ChatGPT and had it return an answer that was almost, but just not quite, right?
Khatera Nazari knows that frustration well. Northwestern Mutual Insurance Company has an internal AI system that, just like ChatGPT, can give answers that are almost, but not quite, right. It’s her job to find the accuracy of those answers, flag the almost-answers, and report the results back.
Nazari is majoring in data science at UW-Milwaukee. This summer, she worked as an AI Intern at Northwestern Mutual’s downtown Milwaukee office. The experience has been fascinating, fun, maybe a little stressful, all at once.
“I love problem solving. I love puzzles and mysteries. Give me a problem and I want to just dig deep and solve the issue,” Nazari said. “The work is amazing. I love my team. I love the project that I’m working on.”
Nazari’s internship is a perfect example of how UWM’s community partnerships lead to opportunities not only for students, but for local industry and businesses. Northwestern Mutual is a generous and long-time supporter of UW-Milwaukee, showcased through the Northwestern Mutual Data Science Institute partnership, which also includes Marquette University. In turn, dozens of UWM graduates have brought their skills and knowledge to work as employees of the company, which also provides many internship opportunities and regularly participates in UWM career fairs.
In fact, that’s how Nazari landed this summer’s internship. She met an NM recruiter at a UWM career fair and handed over her résumé. A few months later, the company asked Nazari if she would be interested in an interview.
“I was like, this is amazing! I was super happy. I got super-excited and started nerding around in the interview. The assistant director for the AI engineering team loved that I was so excited and passionate about AI,” Nazari said with a smile.
As an AI intern, Nazari worked on creating automated frameworks for search accuracy and improving the performance of the retrieval augmented generation (RAG) system and chatbots with language learning models for response evaluations. They’re complicated terms, but Nazari handled them with ease.
“For example with ChatGPT, you ask the question, and sometimes it will give you a little information and some links. ‘For your reference, go to this site,’” she explained. Nazari is working with Northwestern Mutual’s internal AI system, not ChatGPT, but the engines work similarly.
While she’s been putting her data science education to use, she’s also been learning other valuable skills – things like communication, networking, and leadership. She’s sat in meetings with the Northwestern Mutual leadership team and has become a valuable member of the AI team. She hopes to bring those skills with her in her future career, and maybe even found her own startup.
But then, Nazari has always made the most of the opportunities she’s been given. She’s a scholarship student and has built an impressive résumé. Nazari has served as a coordinator and interpreter for Hanan Refugee Relief; co-founded and instructed at the Women and Children’s Center at Fort McCoy, assisting Afghan refugees in their transition to the U.S.; and collaborated on the Afghanistan Oral History Project with UWM Vice Chancellor Chia Youyee Vang. At UWM, she has been a member of the university’s AI Taskforce; participated in software engineering, AI, and data science boot camps; and is a founder/officer in the Data Science Club.
For all of her involvement at UWM, the university has supported her right back. Nazari said she is grateful for the guidance of her advisor, Laura Stark, in helping her pick classes, and she’s also grateful that her classes have given her a solid grounding in data science skills.
“To be honest, UWM takes data science really seriously for undergraduates,” Nazari said. “Data science is a new major and not a lot of schools have data science as a major.”
Nazari just entered her senior year and plans to graduate this spring. With the knowledge she gained at UWM and the skills she’s cultivated during her Northwestern Mutual internship, she’ll be prepared to start building an exciting career in the artificial intelligence and machine learning field.
In the meantime, she’ll be content if she can help get AI to return a completely, not just almost, right answer to your question.
Would you like to learn more about opportunities at Northwestern Mutual? Join the UWM community for a virtual Learning Lunch with special guest Hope Xiong ‘23, talent acquisition specialist at Northwestern Mutual. Xiong will share the latest tips on interviewing and networking, plus details on how to get involved in Northwestern Mutual’s summer internship program.
Northwestern Mutual offers opportunities for students in a variety of majors, including accounting, finance, communications, marketing, computer science, cybersecurity, software engineering, data science, and information systems.
The lunch takes place on Wednesday, Oct. 22 from 12-1 p.m. Register at: https://uwm.edu/advance/event/northwestern-mutual-learning-lunch/
Questions? Please contact Zach Mock at zrmock@uwm.edu.
By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science