I had the great opportunity of attending the BIG DATA & AI WORLD conference. I came out of it with heaps of new ideas which I’m excited to add to my future work. Here I will summarize the key points of the talks.
Keynotes:
The conference highlights were the impressive keynote talks. The keynote talks which impressed me the most was Scaling AI into Real Business by Angela Maragkopoulou (Deutsche Telekom IT GmbH). In my opinion, the talk provided a great showcase of today’s AI capabilities for example Smart assistants and proactive healthcare management initiatives.
Talks:
Moving the World with Artificial Intelligence:
The focus was on the increasing requirement for AI, specifically as a remedy to certain issues that can be experienced with cloud-based architectures. These include:
- Dependency on internet connectivity
- High-latency and bandwidth consumption in the case of high-volume data like video
- Single point of failure
- Lack of data privacy
What must be remembered for AI product development?
- AI as a capability:
- AI is a tool, and not a project nor a product
- Create cross-functional product teams with end-to-end responsibilities
2. Data first:
- Invest in quality and quantity
- Consider legal and ethical aspects such as GDPR
3. Failure is part of the process
Data Engineering Challenges in Energy Demand Data (Databricks)
The talk summarized how Databricks can use Blueprint Architecture when handling complex data structures. Using the Dashboard functionality, Databricks can process and visualize a summary of data on-demand.
One unique talk which stood out to me was AI and Music: Music and machine in perfect harmony (LifeScore). This talk provided a fascinating insight into a new facet of the AI world.
Here, the speaker shared the details of a new music experience taking place in world-renowned recording locales, such as Abbey Road Studios. At first, top artists are asked to compose music, and are helped along by AI. After a number of rounds, the AI is able to independently generate music, which is indistinguishable from that generated by humans.
This could serve to simply automate the process of music creation, or, alternatively, to generate music which could help with patient well-being. These applications really gave a new perspective about AI.
The talk Camera, Lights, Action! Is your Data ready for prime time? (Tableau Software) provided deep insights into how Tableau works when applied to real use cases. The most attractive part was how Tableau can show data in the form of heat maps, highlight tables, geographic maps and more.
The speaker had canvased a huge mass of data related to movies. This included title, ratings, release year, box office performance, and so on. Using Tableau, and the above mentioned data-representation tools, we are able to visualize how well the movie performed in different countries (using geographic maps). Tableau allows us to quickly zoom in onto the specific data for a given country or region.
AI in real-world:
AI has now became a trusted tool for companies to grow faster. With AI, Netflix provides highly accurate predictive technology based on customer’s reactions to films. It examines millions of records to suggest series and films that a viewer might like based on the previous actions and choices of films. As the data set grows, this technology (known as a recommendation system) becomes breathtakingly accurate.
AI in also become a standard feature of banking. Many banks have already adopted AI-based systems to provide customer support, detect anomalies, and hone in on credit card fraud.
AI also plays an important role when it comes to saving lives. Cambio Health Care has developed a clinical decision support system for stroke prevention that can give physicians a warning when there’s a patient at risk of having a stroke.
Summary:
I really enjoyed the conference and was impressed by the quality of talks. BARC made everything quite interactive, and the ease and effectiveness with which the format enabled online discussion was commendable.
To conclude, it is not anything new to say that software is taking over the world. But what is new is the trend of Artificial Intelligence taking over software. AI is said to be one of the most important drivers of digital transformation and helps companies to leverage the potential of data. At the same time, AI is one of the most misunderstood and over-hyped concepts these days. After the conference, I find myself more convinced that we are living in a fascinating rapidly changing era, and that Data Insights GmbH is the best company to usher in these new realities.
