Dr. Constance Dierickx, an expert in decision-making, discusses the concept of meta-leadership and the role of data in effective leadership. They explore the integration of data and creativity, the importance of questioning intuition, and the significance of self-confidence and courage in the workplace. The podcast also delves into validating assertions, the essence of wisdom in decision-making, and the impact of cognitive biases.

Dr. Kendra Vant, Executive GM Data & AI Products at Xero, discusses the importance of a data-driven approach for small businesses. Topics include using data for finance, improving operations, and detecting credit notes. The podcast also highlights the integration of AI and product teams, the significance of data and metrics, and the importance of data literacy in the future of work.

As companies scale and become more successful, new horizons open, but with them come unexpected challenges. The influx of revenue and expansion of operations often reveal hidden complexities that can hinder efficiency and inflate costs. In this tricky situation, data teams can find themselves entangled in a web of obstacles that slow down their ability to innovate and respond to ever-changing business needs. Enter cloud analytics—a transformative solution that promises to break down barriers and unleash potential. By migrating analytics to the cloud, organizations can navigate the growing pains of success, cutting costs, enhancing flexibility, and empowering data teams to work with agility and precision. John Knieriemen is the Regional Business Lead for North America at Exasol, the market-leading high-performance analytics database. Prior to joining Exasol, he served as Vice President and General Manager at Teradata during an 11-year tenure with the company. John is responsible for strategically scaling Exasol’s North America business presence across industries and expanding the organization’s partner network. Solongo Erdenekhuyag is the former Customer Success and Data Strategy Leader at Exasol. Solongo is skilled in strategy, business development, program management, leadership, strategic partnerships, and management.In the episode, Richie, Solongo, and John cover the motivation for moving analytics to the cloud, economic triggers for migration, success stories from organizations who have migrated to the cloud, the challenges and potential roadblocks in migration, the importance of flexibility and open-mindedness and much more. Links from the ShowExasolAmazon S3Azure Blob StorageGoogle Cloud StorageBigQueryAmazon RedshiftSnowflake[Course] Understanding Cloud Computing[Course] AWS Cloud Concepts

Generative AI is here to stay—even in the 8 months since the public release of ChatGPT, there are an abundance of AI tools to help make us more productive at work and ease the stress of planning and execution of our daily lives among other things. Already, many of us are wondering what is to come in the next 8 months, the next year, and the next decade of AI’s evolution. In the grand scheme of things, this really is just the beginning. But what should we expect in this Cambrian explosion of technology? What are the use cases being developed behind the scenes? What do we need to be mindful of when training the next generations of AI? Can we combine multiple LLMs to get better results?Bal Heroor is CEO and Principal at Mactores and has led over 150 business transformations driven by analytics and cutting-edge technology. His team at Mactores are researching and building AI, AR/VR, and Quantum computing solutions for business to gain a competitive advantage. Bal is also the Co-Founder of Aedeon—the first hyper-scale Marketplace for Data Analytics and AI talent.In the episode, Richie and Bal explore common use cases for generative AI, how it's evolving to solve enterprise problems, challenges of data governance and the importance of explainable AI, the challenges of tracking the lineage of AI and data in large organizations. Bal also touches on the shift from general-purpose generative AI models to more specialized models, fascinating use cases in the manufacturing industry, what to consider when adopting AI solutions in business, and much more.Links mentioned in the show:PulsarTrifactaAWS Clarify[Course] Introduction to ChatGPT[Course] Implementing AI Solutions in Business[Course] Generative AI Concepts

'Software is eating the world’ is a truism coined by Mark Andreesen, General Partner at Andreesen Horowitz. This was especially evident during the shift from analog mediums to digital at the turn of the century. Software companies have essentially usurped and replaced their non-digital predecessors. Amazon was the largest bookseller, Netflix was the largest movie "rental" service, Spotify or Apple were the largest music providers.Today, AI is starting to eat the world. However, we are still at the early start of the AI revolution, with AI set to become embedded in almost every piece of software we interact with. An AI ecosystem that touches every aspect of our lives is what today’s guest describes as ‘Ambient AI’. But what can we expect from this ramp up to Ambient AI? How will it change the way we work? What do we need to be mindful of as we develop this technology?Daniel Jeffries is the Managing Director of the AI Infrastructure Alliance and former CIO at Stability AI, the company responsible for Stable Diffusion, the popular open-source image generation model. He’s also an author, engineer, futurist, pro blogger and he’s given talks all over the world on AI and cryptographic platforms.In the episode, Adel and Daniel discuss how to define ambient AI, how our relationship with work will evolve as we become more reliant on AI, what the AI ecosystem is missing to rapidly scale adoption, why we need to accelerate the maturity of the open source AI ecosystem, how AI existential risk discourse takes away focus from real AI risk, and a lot lot more.Links Mentioned in the ShowDaniel’s Writing on MediumDaniel’s SubstackAI Infrastructure AllianceStability AIFrancois CholletRed Pajama DatasetRun AIWill Superintelligent AI End the World? By Eliezer Yudkowsky Nick Bostrom’s Paper Clip MaximizerThe pessimist archive [Course] Introduction to ChatGPT[Course] Implementing AI Solutions in Business

In a time when AI is evolving at breakneck speeds, taking a step back and gaining a bird's-eye view of the evolving AI ecosystem is paramount to understanding where the field is headed.With this bird's-eye view come a series of questions. Which trends will dominate generative AI in the foreseeable future? What are the truly transformative use-cases that will reshape our business landscape? What does the skills economy look like in an age of hyper intelligence?Enter Joanne Chen, General Partner at Foundation Capital. Joanne invests in early-stage AI-first B2B applications and data platforms that are the building blocks of the automated enterprise. She has shared her learnings as a featured speaker at conferences, including CES, SXSW, WebSummit, and has spoken about the impact of AI on society in her TED talk titled "Confessions of an AI Investor." Joanne began her career as an engineer at Cisco Systems and later co-founded a mobile gaming company. She also spent many years working on Wall Street at Jefferies & Company, helping tech companies go through the IPO and M&A processes, and at Probitas Partners, advising venture firms on their fundraising process.Throughout the episode, Richie and Joanne cover emerging trends in generative AI, business use cases that have emerged in the past year since the advent of tools like ChatGPT, the role of AI in augmenting work, the ever-changing job market and AI's impact on it, as well as actionable insights for individuals and organizations wanting to adopt AI.Links mentioned in the show:JasperAIAnyScaleCerebras[Course] Introduction to ChatGPT[Course] Implementing AI Solutions in Business[Course] Generative AI Concepts

Spreadsheets have been the unsung heroes of the data world for many decades now. Yet, despite their ubiquity and importance, they've seen little disruption or evolution. The grid of cells we interact with today isn't far removed from the ones our predecessors used in the 1980s.However, the winds of change have started to blow. As we stand on the cusp of a new era in data and AI, the humble spreadsheet is poised for transformation. The coming changes could redefine how we interact with data, derive insights, and how we make decisions. The implications are vast given the popularity and dependence we have on spreadsheets, and the potential impacts could ripple through every corner of the professional world. Hjalmar Gislason is the founder and CEO of GRID, with their main product being a smart spreadsheet with an interactive data visualization layer and integrated AI assistance. Hjalmar previously served as VP of Product Management at Qlik. He was the founder and CEO of DataMarket, founded in 2008 and sold to Qlik in 2014. A career data nerd and entrepreneur, GRID is Hjalmar’s fifth software startup as a founder. In the episode, Richie and Hjalmar explore the integral role of spreadsheets in today's data-driven world, the limitations of traditional Business Intelligence tools, and the transformative potential of generative AI in the realm of spreadsheets.

Data and AI are advancing at an unprecedented rate—and while the jury is still out on achieving superintelligent AI systems, the idea of artificial intelligence that can understand and learn anything—an “artificial general intelligence”—is becoming more likely. What does the rise of AI mean for the future of software and work as we know it? How will AI help reinvent most of the ways we interact with the digital and physical world?Bob Muglia is a data technology investor and business executive, former CEO of Snowflake, and past president of Microsoft's Server and Tools Division. As a leader in data & AI, Bob focuses on how innovation and ethical values can merge to shape the data economy's future in the era of AI. He serves as a board director for emerging companies that seek to maximize the power of data to help solve some of the world's most challenging problems.In the episode, Richie and Bob explore the current era of AI and what it means for the future of software. Throughout the episode, they discuss how to approach driving value with large language models, the main challenges organizations face when deploying AI systems, the risks, and rewards of fine-tuning LLMs for specific use cases, what the next 12 to 18 months hold for the burgeoning AI ecosystem, the likelihood of superintelligence within our lifetimes, and more. Links from the show:The Datapreneurs by Bob Muglia and Steve HammThe Singularity is Near by Ray KurzweilIsaac AsimovSnowflakePineconeDocugamiOpenAI/GPT-4The Modern Data Stack

Today's government agencies face unprecedented complexities, and when thinking about the role of government in driving positive change for society at large, data & AI stand out as key levers to empower government agencies to do more with less. However, the road to government data & AI transformation is fraught with risk, and is full with opportunity. So how can government data leaders succeed in their transformation endeavors? Steve Orrin is Intel’s Federal Chief Technology Officer. He leads Public Sector Solution Architecture, Strategy, and Technology Engagements and has held technology leadership positions at Intel where he has led cybersecurity programs, products, and strategy. Steve was previously CSO for Sarvega, CTO of Sanctum, CTO and co-founder of LockStar, and CTO at SynData Technologies. He was named one of InfoWorld's Top 25 CTO's, received Executive Mosaic’s Top CTO Executives Award, is a Washington Exec Top Chief Technology Officers to Watch in 2023, was the Vice-Chair of the NSITC/IDESG Security Committee and was a Guest Researcher at NIST’s National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE). He is a fellow at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies and the chair of the INSA Cyber Committee.Throughout the episode, we talked about the unique challenges government face when driving value with data & AI, how agencies need to align their data ambitions with their actual mission, the nuances between data privacy laws between the united states, Europe, and China, how to best approach launching pilot projects if you are in government, and a lot more.

Every year we become increasingly aware of the urgency of the climate crisis, and with that, the need to usher in renewable energies and scale their adoption has never been more important. However, as we look at the ways to scale the adoption of renewable energy, data stands out as a key lever to accelerate a greener future. Today’s guest is Jean-Pierre Pélicier, CDO at ENGIE. ENGIE is one of the largest energy producers in the world and definitely one of the largest in Europe. They operate in more than 48 countries and have committed to becoming carbon neutral by 2045. Data plays a crucial part in these plans.In the episode, Jean-Pierre shares his unique perspective on how data is not just transforming the renewable energy industry but also redefining the way we approach the climate crisis. From harnessing the power of data to optimize energy production and distribution to leveraging advanced analytics to predict and mitigate environmental impacts, Jean-Pierre highlights the ways data continues to be an invaluable tool in our quest for a sustainable future.Also discussed in the episode are the challenges of data collection and quality in the energy sector, the importance of fostering a data culture within an organization, and aligning data strategy with a company's strategic objectives.