Iran's Vice President for Science and Technology Sorena Sattari says the domestic companies and start-ups engaged in developing artificial intelligence technologies have made such progress that are competing with the foreign countries. In a ceremony held in Tehran on Saturday, Sattari unveiled two homegrown AI systems and an artificial intelligence product developed by the local experts and commercialized under the patronage of the Vice Presidency for Science and Technology. In remarks at the event, Sattari highlighted the administration's support for the AI companies and the targeted projects set up for development of artificial intelligence in the country, hoping that Iran would soon enter a competition with the world's top-notch countries in the AI field. "However, it must be mentioned that even at present, a series of products and services provided by the Iranian technological companies active in the artificial intelligence fields can compete with the similar foreign products," the vice president added. A comparison with the advanced countries in the AI arena, such as China, shows that the Iranian-made products developed by the local knowledge-based companies are comparable with the foreign ones, he noted.

Over the past 8 months, I've been interviewing at various companies like Google's DeepMind, Wadhwani Institute of AI, Microsoft, Ola, Fractal Analytics, and a few others primarily for the roles -- Data Scientist, Software Engineer & Research Engineer. In the process, not only did I get an opportunity to interact with many great minds, but also had a peek at myself along with a sense of what people really look for when interviewing someone. I believe that if I'd had this knowledge before, I could have avoided many mistakes and have prepared in a much better manner, which is what the motivation behind this post is, to be able to help someone bag their dream place of work. This post arose from a discussion with one of my juniors on the lack of really fulfilling job opportunities offered through campus placements for people working in AI. Also, when I was preparing, I noticed people using a lot of resources but as per my experience over the past months, I realised that one can do away with a few minimal ones for most roles in AI, all of which I'm going to mention at the end of the post.