Book Image

Creators of Intelligence

By : Dr. Alex Antic
Book Image

Creators of Intelligence

By: Dr. Alex Antic

Overview of this book

A Gartner prediction in 2018 led to numerous articles stating that "85% of AI and machine learning projects fail to deliver.” Although it's unclear whether a mass extinction event occurred for AI implementations at the end of 2022, the question remains: how can I ensure that my project delivers value and doesn't become a statistic? The demand for data scientists has only grown since 2015, when they were dubbed the new “rock stars” of business. But how can you become a data science rock star? As a new senior data leader, how can you build and manage a productive team? And what is the path to becoming a chief data officer? Creators of Intelligence is a collection of in-depth, one-on-one interviews where Dr. Alex Antic, a recognized data science leader, explores the answers to these questions and more with some of the world's leading data science leaders and CDOs. Interviews with: Cortnie Abercrombie, Edward Santow, Kshira Saagar, Charles Martin, Petar Veličković, Kathleen Maley, Kirk Borne, Nikolaj Van Omme, Jason Tamara Widjaja, Jon Whittle, Althea Davis, Igor Halperin, Christina Stathopoulos, Angshuman Ghosh, Maria Milosavljevic, Dr. Meri Rosich, Dat Tran, and Stephane Doyen.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)
1
Chapter 1: Introducing the Creators of Intelligence

Getting started in data science

Alex Antic: I’d like to get an idea of your career trajectory, especially with the interesting role you had early on as a police inspector. Did you think of taking another career based on your early studies? What made you shift your focus to AI and data more broadly?

Jason Tamara Widjaja: I think I’m very fortunate to have arrived at data science and AI because, for the earlier part of my career, I was struggling to find an area that intersected with my interests.

My first degree was in computer science, but I always knew I didn’t want to be a purely technical “backend” person. I was trying to find something that brought different parts of the discipline together but, unfortunately, here in Singapore where I did my first degree, they labeled you a little bit – you were either a computing person, a business person, or an arts person. Things have improved since then but this was maybe 20 or so years ago,...