We’ve heard so much about the value and capabilities of generative AI over the past year, and we’ve all become accustomed to the chat interfaces of our preferred models. One of the main concerns many of us have had has been privacy. Is OpenAI keeping the data and information I give to ChatGPT secure? One of the touted solutions to this problem is running LLMs locally on your own machine, but with the hardware cost that comes with it, running LLMs locally has not been possible for many of us. Tha...
Feb 22, 2024•52 min
Snowflake has been foundational in the data space for years. In the mid-2010s, the platform was a major driver of moving data to the cloud. More recently, it's become apparent that combining data and AI in the cloud is key to accelerating innovation. Snowflake has been rapidly adding AI features to provide value to the modern data stack, but what’s really been going on under the hood? At the time of recording, Sridhar Ramaswamy was the SVP of AI at Snowflake, being appointed CEO at Snowflake in ...
Feb 21, 2024•45 min
Databricks started out as a platform for using Spark, a big data analytics engine, but it's grown a lot since then. Databricks now allows users to leverage their data and AI projects in the same place, ensuring ease of use and consistency across operations. The Databricks platform is converging on the idea of data intelligence, but what does this mean, how will it help data teams and organizations, and where does AI fit in the picture? Ari is Databricks’ Head of Evangelism and "The Real Moneybal...
Feb 20, 2024•52 min
One of the biggest surprises of the generative AI revolution over the past 2 years lies in the counter-intuitiveness of its most successful use cases. Counter to most predictions made about AI years ago, AI-assisted coding, specifically AI-assisted data work, has been surprisingly one of the biggest killer apps of generative AI tools and copilots. However, what happens when we take this notion even further? How will analytics workflows look like when generative AI tools can also assist us in pro...
Feb 19, 2024•41 min
Just as many of us have been using generative AI tools to make us more productive at work, so have bad actors. Generative AI makes it much easier to create fake yet convincing text and images that can be used to deceive and harm. We’ve already seen lots of high-profile attempts to leverage AI in phishing campaigns, and this is putting more pressure on cybersecurity teams to get ahead of the curve and combat these new forms of threats. However, AI is also helping those that work in cybersec to be...
Feb 12, 2024•32 min
We are in a Generative AI hype cycle. Every executive looking at the potential generative AI today is probably thinking about how they can allocate their department's budget to building some AI use cases. However, many of these use cases won't make it into production. In a similar vein, the hype around machine learning in the early 2010s led to lots of hype around the technology, but a lot of the value did not pan out. Four years ago, VentureBeat showed that 87% of data science projects did not ...
Feb 05, 2024•47 min
We don’t think about every decision we make. Some decisions are easy and intuitive, others can be riddled with doubt. In a business setting, decision-making is often crucial, and with that comes pressure to ensure we’re making the right decisions in the best way possible. We can often accompany decision-making with context, providing a narrative for how we might approach a decision, citing what data and insights have had significant input into our choices. But how do we approach storytelling and...
Feb 01, 2024•1 hr 3 min
Arianna Huffington, co-founder of The Huffington Post, woke up in a pool of blood nursing a broken cheekbone after collapsing at her desk in 2007. Various stresses and pressures in her life had manifested themself into an episode of extreme mental exhaustion. This event was the catalyst for her to write a book on well-being as well as start the behavioral-change company Thrive Global. Many of us have, or will, experience burnout at some point. The build-up of stress, negative emotions, and inter...
Jan 29, 2024•44 min
2023 was a huge year for data and AI. Everyone who didn't live under a rock started using generative AI, and much was teased by companies like OpenAI, Microsoft, Google and Meta. We saw the millions of different use cases generative AI could be applied to, as well as the iterations we could expect from the AI space, such as connected multi-modal models, LLMs in mobile devices and formal legislation. But what has this meant for DataCamp? What will we do to facilitate learners and organizations ar...
Jan 25, 2024•32 min
In January 2024, six activists were identified by British Police in London, suspected of planning to disrupt the London Stock Exchange through a lock-in. In an attempt to prevent the building from opening for trading. Despite the foiled attempt, the strategy for this protest was inherently flawed. Trading no longer requires a busy exchange with raucous shouting and phone calls to facilitate the flow of investment around the world. Nowadays, machines can trade at a fraction of a second, ingesting...
Jan 22, 2024•31 min
Cookies were invented to help online shoppers, simply as an identifier so that online carts weren’t lost to the ether. Marketers quickly saw the power of using cookies for more than just maintaining session states, and moved to use them as part of their targeted advertising. Before we knew it, our online habits were being tracked, without our clear consent. The unregulated cookie-boom lasted until 2018 with the advent of GDPR and the CCPA. Since then marketers have been evolving their practices,...
Jan 18, 2024•50 min
We’ve never been more aware of the word ‘hallucinate’ in a professional setting. Generative AI has taught us that we need to work in tandem with personal AI tools when we want accurate and reliable information. We’ve also seen the impacts of bias in AI systems, and why trusting outputs at face value can be a dangerous game, even for the largest tech organizations in the world. It seems we could be both very close and very far away from being able to fully trust AI in a work setting. To really fi...
Jan 15, 2024•51 min
Your data project doesn't end once you have results. In order to have impact, you need to communicate those results to others. Presentations filled with endless tables and technical jargon can easily become tedious, leading your audience to lose interest or misunderstand your point. Data storytelling provides a solution to this: by creating a narrative around your results you can increase engagement and understanding from your audience. This is an art, and there are so many factors that contribu...
Jan 11, 2024•1 hr 12 min
Data used to be the exhaust of our work activities, until we started seeing the value it can provide. Today, data is a strategic asset, used to gain a competitive advantage and well guarded from those that might use it to harm others. With this change in attitude, how we access and safeguard our data has improved massively. However, data breaches are not a thing of the past, and with the advent of AI, many new techniques for maliciously accessing data are being created. With the extra importance...
Jan 08, 2024•46 min
We learned so much about generative AI and its impact for people and organizations in 2023, we must anticipate many more innovations in the data and AI space 2024. One of the best places to look for this information is through the wisdom of those that spend their time with the Fortune 1000 leaders that are helping shape data and AI practices. Wavestone’s annual Data and AI Executive Leadership Survey is a great way to gain insight into thoughts in current practices, as well as understand what to...
Jan 04, 2024•46 min
Regardless of profession, the work we do leaves behind a trace of actions that help us achieve our goals. This is especially true for those that work with data. For large enterprises where there are seemingly countless processes happening at any one time, keeping track of these processes is crucial. Given the scale of these processes, one small efficiency gain can leads to a staggering amount of time and money saved. Process mining is a data-driven approach to process analysis that uses event lo...
Dec 28, 2023•56 min
There are a few caveats to using generative AI tools, those caveats have led to a few tips that have quickly become second nature to those that use LLMs like ChatGPT. The main one being: have the domain knowledge to validate the output in order to avoid hallucinations. Hallucinations are one of the weak spots for LLMs due to the nature of the way they are built, as they are trained to correlate data in order to predict what might come next in an incomplete sequence. Does this mean that we’ll alw...
Dec 18, 2023•50 min
Over the past year, we’ve seen a full hype cycle of hysteria and discourse surrounding generative AI. It almost seems difficult to think back to a time when no one had used ChatGPT. We are in the midst of the fourth industrial revolution, and technology is moving rapidly. Better performing and more capable models are being released at a stunning rate, and with the growing presence of multimodal AI, can we expect another whirlwind year that vastly changes the state of play within AI again? Who mi...
Dec 11, 2023•50 min
Effective data management has become a cornerstone of success in our digital era. It involves not just collecting and storing information but also organizing, securing, and leveraging data to drive progress and innovation. Many organizations turn to tools like Snowflake for advanced data warehousing capabilities. However, while Snowflake enhances data storage and access, it's not a complete solution for all data management challenges. To address this, tools like Capital One’s Slingshot can be us...
Dec 04, 2023•33 min
There's often a debate in technology ethics on whether technology is neutral or not. On one hand, critics have rightfully pointed out examples of technology exacerbating the climate crisis, amplifying bias as we've seen in our recent episode with Dr. Joy Buolamwini, or contributing to the spread of misinformation and disinformation. Conversely, we cannot deny the many wonderful things technology has given us, from better healthcare outcomes, to the ability to communicate wherever we are in the w...
Nov 27, 2023•46 min
The consequences of data not being easily accessible within an organization are profound. Good decision-making often relies on good information, and with crucial insights locked behind closed doors, decision-makers may have to rely on incomplete information, stifling their ability to innovate through a lack of comprehensive data access or an inability to leverage data to its full potential. The ramifications of this are not merely operational – they extend to the core of an organization's abilit...
Nov 20, 2023•46 min
We are all guilty of getting excited about shiny new toys in whatever guise they present themselves to us. For many of us, lots of the recent shiny new toys have been ways of utilizing AI to update and iterate on the ways that we work. Leadership teams have been looking for ways that their organizations can incorporate AI solutions into their products, regardless of whether they might be the most valuable use of the company's time. A company that fails to incorporate new tools and technology wil...
Nov 13, 2023•1 hr 1 min
Poor data engineering is like building a shaky foundation for a house—it leads to unreliable information, wasted time and money, and even legal problems, making everything less dependable and more troublesome in our digital world. In the retail industry specifically, data engineering is particularly important for managing and analyzing large volumes of sales, inventory, and customer data, enabling better demand forecasting, inventory optimization, and personalized customer experiences. It helps ...
Nov 06, 2023•51 min
In 2015 an MIT Researcher set out to build a mirror that would augment their face to look like those of their idols. The execution of this went well, until it came to testing. When the researcher came to use the mirror, no face was detected. The researcher was not detected in the mirror, until that is, she put on a white mask, at which point, the mirror worked as expected. Three years later, a paper named ‘Gender Shades: Intersectional Accuracy Disparities in Commercial Gender Classificati...
Oct 30, 2023•54 min
I think it's safe to say that we are in the peak of the hype cycle with generative AI. Almost every week now, we see new startups with exciting new GenAI use-cases and products. However, exciting doesn't necessarily translate to useful. And now more than ever, it's important for leaders, whether at incumbents or startups, to adapt and drive value with generative AI and focus on useful use-cases. So how can they adapt well to these tectonic changes? Jason Feifer is the editor in chief of Entrepre...
Oct 23, 2023•46 min
Throughout the past year, we've seen AI go from a nice-to-have, to a must-have in almost every large organization’s boardroom. There’s been more and more focus deploy AI by leadership teams, and as a result, there's never been more pressure on the data team to deliver with AI. However, as the pressure to deliver with AI grows, the need to build safe and trustworthy experiences has also never been more important. But how do we balance between innovation and building these trustworthy experi...
Oct 16, 2023•39 min
In today's AI landscape, organizations are actively exploring how to seamlessly embed AI into their products, systems, processes, and workflows. The success of ChatGPT stands as a testament to this. Its success is not solely due to the performance of the underlying model; a significant part of its appeal lies in its human-centered user experience, particularly its chat interface. Beyond the foundational skills, infrastructure, and tools, it's clear that great design is a crucial ingredient in bu...
Oct 09, 2023•53 min
It's been almost a year since ChatGPT was released, mainstreaming AI into the collective consciousness in the process. Since that moment, we've seen a really spirited debate emerge within the data & AI communities, and really public discourse at large. The focal point of this debate is whether AI is or will lead to existential risk for the human species at large. We've seen thinkers such as Elizier Yudkowski, Yuval Noah Harari, and others sound the alarm bell on how AI is as dangerous, if no...
Oct 02, 2023•47 min
From the dawn of humanity, decisions, both big and small, have shaped our trajectory. Decisions have built civilizations, forged alliances, and even charted the course of our very evolution. And now, as data & AI become more widespread, the potential upside for better decision making is massive. Yet, like any technology, the true value of data & AI is realized by how we wield it. We're often drawn to the allure of the latest tools and techniques, but it's crucial to remember that t...
Sep 25, 2023•1 hr 9 min
In data science, the push for unbiased machine learning models is evident. So much effort is made into ensuring the products we create are done thoughtfully and correctly, but are we investing the same effort in ensuring our teams, the very architects of these models, are diverse and inclusive? Bias in data can lead to skewed results, and similarly, a lack of diversity in teams can result in narrow perspectives. As we prioritize building diversity and inclusion into our data, it's equally crucia...
Sep 18, 2023•49 min
