Andy is a Data Platform and AI Architect at Microsoft, where he has worked for over 24 years. A long time ago, his father dropped two books on his desk and said: "Andy, I need you to be an SQL Expert for a meeting tomorrow. Can you handle that?" Recently out of college, he was still accustomed to cramming for an exam, so he showed up the next day, won the project, and began his new life as a “data guy.”

Since then, he’s “been around the (data) block.” Whether a developer, database analyst, architect, project lead, or more recently a part of a sales organization, the heart of his job has always revolved around data: acquiring it, shaping it, moving it, protecting it, using it to predict future outcomes, processing it efficiently, etc.

Topics of Discussion:

[4:56] Andy has always grown up with computers around and has his father to thank for a lot of it.

[6:39] What is it that causes some developers to say, I want to write code, but I don’t want to mess with the database?

[14:29] What does Andy’s job as an AI architect look like?

[16:19] When you have that predictive function with something to host it, that’s where AI happens and when intelligence starts happening in your application.

[17:16] The importance of pre-trained models in machine learning.

[20:00] What is reinforcement learning?

[20:58] Why are we calling some things artificial intelligence and other things, not AI?

[24:44] Andy gives his advice for those new to writing software and in developing.

[29:08] What is a data lake?

[31:48] The importance of thinking about the database as part of the application, not a separate thing.

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