My name is Ken Honda and I was an intern at OrangeTechLab (OTL) for a little less than two years from June 2018. In this blog, I would like to look back on my encounter with OTL and its activities!
The reason why I emphasized "as an intern" is because I was actually involved with OTL before I started my internship at the company.
In 2016, a project for research and practice was launched at Komazawa University, where I was enrolled. Professor Yoshida of my laboratory was involved in the launch of this project, and he asked me if I would like to participate in the project, which was our first encounter. At that time, I met the current president of OTL, Mr. Miyazaki, and other members of the project, and I was able to participate in the regular meetings of the project. At that time, OTL had not been established yet, so I was able to see how the company was being built from close up, and it was a great experience.
When I first joined the project, I was still a graduate student in the master's course, and I remember that every regular meeting of the project was exciting and I was always nervous. Since I had switched to information science when I entered the graduate school from the undergraduate course, I was still lacking in knowledge and experience, and it was all I could do to keep up with the discussions. I was able to learn a lot from the professionals who gathered there, and I think I was able to set a standard for myself now in terms of knowledge, skills, and experience.
When OrangeTechLab was established in 2017, I entered the doctoral program and joined OTL as an intern. I was involved in a variety of activities, mainly surveying and reverse engineering. Although I was only involved in a little bit of development, I became interested in machine learning and deep learning because I saw products and projects that were actually built with deep learning while working at OTL. My research aims to solve the problem of "false rumors and fake news", which is a theme in social psychology, by using information technology such as databases (I call it credibility evaluation technology). In the paper, I mention AI and machine learning, and I use natural language processing as a technology. These are ideas and techniques that I have adopted based on what I have noticed and learned through my activities at OTL.
This figure shows the main technical elements involved in the current credibility evaluation technology. As I mentioned a little more in the paper, a lot of this research was done through OTL activities. I was very grateful and warmly welcomed by the OTL staff, who cared not only about my work but also about my graduate school life, and encouraged me to do work that would be useful for my research.
One of the most memorable activities in OTL was the experience of digging into a technology as a survey, summarizing it, and presenting it in front of clients. Again, everything was new to me. No mistakes! I was fixing the materials until the very last minute. It was an exciting experience that was completely different from my research.
I was able to learn not only about research and technology, but also about how to proceed with a project, and what is necessary as a member of society. I was able to complete the doctoral course in three years and obtain a doctorate because of the activities at OTL. This is not really an exaggeration, but it is true that the activities I did in OTL, such as survey research, are cited in my doctoral thesis!
I will continue to work in the same field with what I have learned through OrangeTechLab, and I am looking forward to the opportunity to work with OrangeTechLab members again.
Thank you very much!
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
