Andrew shares how generative AI is used by academic institutions, why employers and educators need to curb their fear of AI, what we need to consider for using AI responsibly, and the ins and outs of Andrew’s podcast, Insight x Design. 

Key Points From This Episode:

• Andrew Madson explains what a tech evangelist is and what his role at Dremio entails. 
• The ins and outs of Dremio. 
• Understanding the pain points that Andrew wanted to alleviate by joining Dremio. 
• How Andrew became a tech evangelist, and why he values this role.
• Why all tech roles now require one to upskill and branch out into other areas of expertise. 
• The problems that Andrew most commonly faces at work, and how he overcomes them. 
• How Dremio uses generative AI, and how the technology is used in academia. 
• Why employers and educators need to do more to encourage the use of AI. 
• The provenance of training data, and other considerations for the responsible use of AI. 
• Learning more about Andrew’s new podcast, Insight x Design. 

Quotes:

“Once I learned about lakehouses and Apache Iceberg and how you can just do all of your work on top of the data lake itself, it really made my life a lot easier with doing real-time analytics.” — @insightsxdesign [0:04:24]

“Data analysts have always been expected to be technical, but now, given the rise of the amount of data that we’re dealing with and the limitations of data engineering teams and their capacity, data analysts are expected to do a lot more data engineering.” — @insightsxdesign [0:07:49]

“Keeping it simple and short is ideal when dealing with AI.” — @insightsxdesign [0:12:58]

“The purpose of higher education isn’t to get a piece of paper, it’s to learn something and to gain new skills.” — @insightsxdesign [0:17:35]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Andrew Madson

Andrew Madson on LinkedIn

Andrew Madson on X

Andrew Madson on Instagram

Dremio 

Insights x Design

Apache Iceberg

ChatGPT

Perplexity AI

Gemini

Anaconda 

Peter Wang on LinkedIn

How AI Happens

Sama