Start with Stories, End with Data with Ashish Thusoo, GM of AI/ML at AWS

Jun 7, 2023

47:41

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As human beings, we’re not accustomed to talking about data. In order to learn about new subjects, we traditionally use stories. However, bridging the gap between data and stories allows us to cross that barrier and create data-driven organizations.

In this episode, Satyen interviews Ashish Thusoo, GM of AI and ML at AWS. Previously, Ashish was the Founder and CEO of Qubole, a pioneering cloud data lake platform. He also served Facebook as the Engineering Manager of Data Infrastructure where he co-created Apache Hive with the aim to democratize data access and analytics. Satyen and Ashish discuss the accelerated push to the cloud, building a data culture, and how the economic climate is impacting customers.

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“You have to remember, human beings are trained from the get-go to talk about stories, not data. That's how we learn. It takes special discipline to bring the conversation back to data, saying that, ‘You have this anecdote somewhere. Get me the data that proves or disproves it.’ That specific mindset has got to be inserted in the organization, and that's how it becomes data-driven. It's a very fine line, but if you cross that line, essentially you become a data-driven organization. But, if you stay on the side of anecdotes and stories, then you can't bridge that.” – Ashish Thusoo

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Time Stamps:

*(02:33): The SQL excitement that powered Hive

*(13:42): The evolution of Qubole’s founder hypothesis

*(22:48): Navigating Amazon with AI/ML

*(31:41): The future of AI/ML investment

*(42:01): People are the foundation of the data culture

*(45:57): Satyen’s Takeaways

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