Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

S5 Bonus: Real World AI

Jul 1, 2021

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How can you successfully deploy AI? When AI works, it’s nothing short of brilliant, helping companies make or save tremendous amounts of money while delighting customers on an unprecedented scale. When it fails, the results can be devastating.

Most AI models never make it out of testing, but those failures aren’t random. This practical guide to deploying AI lays out a human-first, responsible approach that has seen more than three times the success rate when compared to the industry average.

In Real World AI, Alyssa Simpson Rochwerger and Wilson Pang share dozens of AI stories from startups and global enterprises alike featuring personal experiences from people who have worked on global AI deployments that impact billions of people.

AI for business doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Real World AI uses plain language to walk you through an AI approach that you can feel confident about—for your business and for your customers.

Author Biographies:

Alyssa Rochwerger is a customer-driven product leader dedicated to building products that solve hard problems for real people. She delights in bringing products to market that make a positive impact for customers. Her experience in scaling products from concept to large-scale ROI has been proven at both startups and large enterprises alike.

She has held numerous product leadership roles for machine learning organizations. She served as VP of product for Figure Eight (acquired by Appen), VP of AI and data at Appen, and director of product at IBM Watson. She recently left the space to pursue her dream of using technology to improve healthcare. Currently, she serves as director of product at Blue Shield of California, where she is happily surrounded by lots of data, many hard problems, and nothing

but opportunities to make a positive impact. She is thrilled to pursue the mission of providing access to high-quality, affordable healthcare that is worthy of our families and friends.

Alyssa was born and raised in San Francisco, California, and holds a BA in American studies from Trinity College. When she is not geeking out on data and technology, she can be found hiking, cooking, and dining at “off the beaten path” restaurants with her family.

Wilson Pang joined Appen in November 2018 as CTO and is responsible for the company’s products and technology. Wilson has over nineteen years’ experience in software engineering and data science. Prior to joining Appen, Wilson was chief data officer of Ctrip in China, the second-largest online travel agency company in the world, where he led data engineers, analysts, data product managers, and scientists to improve user experience and increase operational efficiency that grew the business. Before that, he was senior director of engineering at eBay in California and provided leadership in various domains, including data service and solutions, search science, marketing technology, and billing systems. He worked as an architect at IBM prior to eBay, building technology solutions for various clients. Wilson obtained his master’s and bachelor’s degrees in electrical engineering from Zhejiang University in China.