In this episode of the podcast, members of the InfoQ editorial staff and friends of InfoQ discuss the current trends in the domain of AI, ML and Data Engineering.

One of the regular features of InfoQ are the trends reports, which each focus on a different aspect of software development. These reports provide the InfoQ readers and listeners with a high-level overview of the topics to pay attention to this year.

InfoQ AI, ML and Data Engineering editorial team met with external guests to discuss the trends in AI and ML areas, and what to watch out for the next 12 months. In addition to the written report and trends graph, this podcast provides a recording of a discussion where expert panelists discuss how innovative AI technologies are disrupting the industry.

Read a transcript of this interview: http://bit.ly/4nRpvlF

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Transcript

AI, ML, and Data Engineering InfoQ Trends Report 2025

generative ai automotive solutions

Fresh out of the studio, Nick Eayrs, Vice President of Field Engineering for Asia Pacific and Japan at Databricks, and Simon Fassot, General Manager and Head of Global Data and Analytics at Hafnia, join us to explore how data intelligence is transforming enterprise AI across diverse industries in Asia. Nick explained the fundamental distinction between general intelligence and data intelligence - emphasizing how enterprises gain competitive advantage by training AI on their proprietary data rather than public knowledge. Nick showcased customer success stories including Standard Chartered Bank and TechComBank and shared his perspectives on how senior executives can take advantage of AI by moving fast rather than wait and see. Last but not least, Nick offered what great would look like for Databricks in Asia Pacific and Japan in serving their customers. Adding the lens of the customer, Simon shared Hafnia's transformation from legacy SQL Server systems to a unified Databricks architecture serving their global shipping operations and elaborated on how the company is breaking down silos with their data supermarket and "Marvis" AI copilot for maritime operations based on retrieval augmented generation. 

"I think the biggest trap to potentially fall into is, "Hey, it's moving so fast, so much is changing. Let's just wait it out." Completely the wrong approach. You just gotta get started." Nick Eayrs from Databricks

"As tech people within the shipping industry, how do we explain, how do we make it accessible to all our users? So that's where we came up with the idea of a data supermarket, with in mind really the target of enabling self-service for our business. So by giving the analogy of a supermarket, it was much easier at the beginning to explain our business." - Simon Fassot from Hafnia

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] QOTD by Nick Eayrs and Simon Fassot
[00:49] Introduction: Nick Eayrs from Databricks
[03:32] Customer obsession means deeply understanding their business context
[05:22] Data intelligence versus artificial general intelligence explanation begins
[06:42] AI trained on your data creates competitive advantage
[08:17] Only 15% of companies have correct AI infrastructure ready
[11:17] Don't wait for AI perfection, just get started now
[12:30] Agent Bricks simplify AI development using natural language
[18:32] Shared responsibility model for ethical AI deployment
[25:24] Asia Pacific psychology focuses on future, not past
[26:28] Most important question: How do you get started?
[30:18] What does great look like for Databricks?
[33:16] Introduction: Simon Fassot from Hafnia
[35:18] How Hafnia transformed to full cloud architecture centralizes data through Databricks
[36:28] Self-service access needed for 300 onshore, 4000 vessel employees
[41:32] Unity catalog controls data quality for AI cases
[42:21] Two-phase Gen AI: ingest unstructured, then consume data
[44:25] How to implement Generative AI: One bad AI answer loses all user trust
[45:31] How reports in Hafnia use RAG embedded in workflows
[46:47] Data supermarket analogy simplifies self-service for business
[48:39] Marvis AI personalizes Gen AI within company context 
[49:46] Neo4j partnership adds graph capabilities to ecosystem
[53:33] DNA Port platform unifies scattered dashboards and applications
[54:22] Databricks enables focus on business value over operations

Profiles:
Nick Eayrs, Vice President of Field Engineering, Asia Pacific & Japan at Databricks
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-eayrs/

Simon Fassot, General Manager and Head of Global Data and Analytics at Hafnia
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-fassot-68b95135/

Podcast Information: Bernard Leong hosts and produces the show. The proper credits for the intro and end music are "Energetic Sports Drive." G. Thomas Craig mixed and edited the episode in both video and audio format. 

#dataaiworldtour #databricks #enterpriseai #retrievalaugmentedgeneration #dataintelligence

The Truth About Enterprise AI & Why Data Matters with Nick Eayrs and Simon Fassot

Fresh out of the studio, Craig Wiley, Senior Director of Product Management at Databricks who leads Mosaic AI, joins us to discuss the forefront of enterprise AI from model development to deployment at scale. Beginning with his career journey in ML operations, Craig explained how he recognized the critical connection between data and AI layers that could deliver order-of-magnitude acceleration in development cycles. Emphasizing the transition from classical ML operations to LLM operations, he showcased how Databricks' unified platform eliminates training-serving skew through data lineage capabilities and supports both fine-tuning and RAG approaches depending on industrial use case requirements. Highlighting compelling customer success stories including Suncorp's employee productivity platform and AstraZeneca's transformation of 400,000 clinical trial documents into queryable insights, Craig revealed a striking reality about enterprise AI evaluation - that 85% of AI use cases are being evaluated only by the engineers who built them, reinforcing that proper evaluation frameworks remain foundational for trustworthy AI implementation. He concluded by introducing Agent Bricks as Databricks' evaluation-centric approach to building production agents, emphasizing that model flexibility and rigorous testing are essential for enterprises moving from experimentation to production, while sharing his vision that the industry must evolve from the "year of agents" to the "year of evaluation and quality."

"85% of AI use cases are being evaluated by the engineer who built it saying, 'yep, seemed to work pretty well.' If you're gonna build a system that's going to be critical to the business, that's going to be important that it gets it right, then you can't do that without evaluations." - Craig Wiley

Episode Highlights: 
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Craig Wiley
[01:21] How Craig Wiley started his work in ML Ops that led him to Databricks
[02:43] Data and AI layer connection creates order-of-magnitude acceleration
[03:47] Mosaic AI acquisition expanded Gen AI solution capabilities
[04:38] Classical ML statistics versus Gen AI evaluation challenges
[05:48] Mosaic AI covers end-to-end from data ingestion
[07:12] Training-serving skew eliminated through unified platform lineage
[08:51] Fine tuning versus RAG depends on use case
[10:49] Industrial agents benefit from fine-tuned smaller models
[13:52] Agent Bricks prioritizes accuracy over simplicity alone
[15:44] Model flexibility crucial for speed and accuracy optimization
[17:59] Suncorp and AstraZeneca demonstrate diverse AI applications
[19:37] Asia Pacific shows aggressive AI adoption strategies
[22:00] 85% of AI cases evaluated only by building engineer
[24:12] Industry terminology evolves rapidly from RAG to agents
[25:39] Customer creativity with governance capabilities inspires product development

Profile: Craig Wiley, Senior Director of Product Management at Databricks and Mosaic AI
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/craigwiley/

Podcast Information: Bernard Leong hosts and produces the show. The proper credits for the intro and end music are "Energetic Sports Drive." G. Thomas Craig mixed and edited the episode in both video and audio format. 

Here are the links to watch or listen to our podcast.
Analyse Asia Main Site: https://analyse.asia
Analyse Asia Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1kkRwzRZa4JCICr2vm0vGl 
Analyse Asia Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/id914868245 
Analyse Asia LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia/


#dataaiworldtour #databricks #enterpriseai #retrievalaugmentedgeneration #agentbricks #evalsAI #evaluationAI #MLOps

Agent Bricks and How Data-AI Integration Changes Everything with Craig Wiley

Topic: The AI Analytics Revolution.
Dana DiTomaso discusses her childhood and professional journey (01:12), the difference between data and insights (16:36), her views on Google Analytics 4 [GA4] (22:02), the optimal cadence for marketing reporting (25:24), the AI-driven balance between what we can and what we should measure (27:44), the need for dedicated AI analytics tools (30:18), takeaways from attributing traffic to AI Search in GA4 (32:13), the relative value of top-, mid-, and bottom-funnel content (37:13), referral traffic from AI Search (38:37), the added value of AI in analytics (40:21), challenges with AI hallucinations (42:04), AI as an analytics assistant (44:25), and the future of marketing in the AI era (49:01).

Ep. 118 - Dana DiTomaso, Founder And CEO Of Marketing Insights Agency Analytics Playbook

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a daily companion for many—summarizing texts, providing quick answers, or finding the right image for a presentation. What often goes unnoticed, however, is that AI systems are far from neutral. Distortions in training data, the concentration of AI development in the Global North, dominant cultural perspectives, and the lack of material in less widely used languages all contribute to biases that algorithms reproduce and even amplify.

In their ifa study “Inclusive and Secure Artificial Intelligence: A Global Perspective on Policy and Technical Developments”, researchers Dr Saiph Savage and Lili Savage examine how these distortions arise and explore ways to address them. In this episode of ‘Die Kulturmittler:innen’, they join host Amira El Ahl to discuss inclusive AI design, the role of cultural institutions and international NGOs, and how we can work toward more ethical and inclusive AI systems.

Find the ifa study „Inclusive and Secure Artificial Intelligence” under: https://culturalrelations.ifa.de/forschen/ergebnisse/inklusive-und-sichere-ki/
More on the topic of inclusive Artificial Intelligence:
https://culturalrelations.ifa.de/en/research/results/democratising-ai-through-culture/
Podcast episode with Octavio Kulesz on Navigating AI in the Cultural Sector:
https://www.ifa.de/deep-dive-navigating-ai-in-the-cultural-sector-with-octavio-kulesz-ifa-podcast/

For all other information visit our website: https://culturalrelations.ifa.de/en/
To learn more about ifa: https://www.ifa.de/en/

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email us at podcast@ifa.de.

Die Kulturmittler:innen | Overcoming Bias: Building Inclusive AI. With Saiph Savage and Lili Savage

A personal reflection on managing AI implementation projects, the challenges of maintaining strategic focus, and the practical realities of working with generative AI in a corporate environment.


AI as a Product: Losing and Finding the North Star

🔥 Dive into the **Weekly AI News Roundup** with Shailendra Kumar (Shaily)! Covering the week starting March 23, 2025, this episode unpacks OpenAI’s game-changing launch of GPT-5 Pro, new Apps SDK & AgentKit tools, and reveals how ChatGPT’s thriving ecosystem is set to revolutionize AI app development. Explore **Sora 2’s** cinematic text-to-video generation and Cameo for personalized media—perfect for marketers and creators embracing deep learning breakthroughs.

We break down BEKAN, an advanced neural architecture reshaping scientific simulations, and analyze a certified safety framework for RLHF promising provable, safer AI across industries. Plus, DeepSeek’s efficient R1 model challenges U.S. leaders like Canva and Coursera, showcasing global competition in machine learning and AI engineering.

Why does this matter? Whether you’re a developer, data scientist, or business leader, this podcast delivers actionable insights you need to stay ahead in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Shaily’s expert tips highlight real-world use cases—all in clear, accessible language.

➡️ Subscribe, share, and join Shaily on YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn for the latest machine learning developments, research, and more. Keep questioning and make data work for you! 🚀

🚀 News with Shaily for Week starting Oct 13: Is GPT-5 Pro Changing Everything?

Fresh out of the studio, Ling Hai, President of Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East, and Africa at MasterCard, joins us to explore how payment networks are evolving to embrace stable coins, AI agents, and the future of digital commerce across diverse global markets. He shares his career journey from management consulting to retail banking and eventually to MasterCard. Ling Hai shares that MasterCard is a global technology company that creates interoperability and universal acceptance, with technology services like cybersecurity, data insights, and consulting increasingly contributing to revenue beyond traditional payment processing. He highlights compelling innovations from Asia Pacific leading the way, including Singapore's nationwide open loop transit system and MasterCard's approach to stable coins as settlement vehicles alongside traditional currencies, while emphasizing how the company bridges the DeFi universe with the physical merchant world through on-ramp and off-ramp solutions for crypto adoption in markets like Latin America. Closing the conversation, Ling Hai shares what great looks like for MasterCard to become the operating system of commerce and the digital economy.

“MasterCard, in the end, is a global technology company. We run a global network, and we’re very much a data company. So, in all of this, when we handle people’s money and when we handle people’s data, trust is the most important thing. If we lose that, we lose our business. For us, that trust factor is absolutely critical — it’s embedded in everything we do.As the world evolves, we’ve gone from handling payments in the physical world, to e-commerce in the digital world. Tomorrow, with AI, it’s going to be agentic — agents will be doing commerce for us. But the common thread across all of this is still safety, security, trust, and also ease of use.Today’s consumer doesn’t want to trade off between convenience and security — they want both. So when we think about our solutions and services, that’s part of our design thinking. We must ensure they are easy, convenient, safe, secure, and trusted by everyone.” - Ling Hai

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Ling Hai
[01:00] Introduction: Ling Hai
[03:00] Overview of Mastercard and balancing global consistency with localization
[06:00] MasterCard's vision: inclusive digital economy for everyone
[09:13] Open loop transit leading digital payment adoption
[11:14] Asia Pacific: most advanced multi-payment region globally
[14:03] MasterCard is a global technology company focused on trust.
[16:00] Stable coins create more use cases for MasterCard
[20:38] Two universes: DeFi and traditional finance will coexist
[21:07] Payment secret sauce: resolving disputes when things fail
[24:00] Stable coins stronger for B2B, wholesale settlement use
[25:38] Be at the table or you're on table
[29:00] AI enables personalization beyond one-size-fits-all marketing
[31:24] Agent commerce requires new rules and payment standards
[32:23] Tokenization and authentication: no regret moves for future
[34:16] MasterCard network supports real-time payments beyond cards
[35:00] What does great look like:: Operating system of commerce and digital economy
[36:00] Closing

Profile: Ling Hai, President of Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East, and Africa, Mastercard
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ling-hai-a7952ab8/

#mastercard #stablecoins #agenticai #payments #finance 

Podcast Information: Bernard Leong hosts and produces the show. The proper credits for the intro and end music are "Energetic Sports Drive." G. Thomas Craig mixed and edited the episode in both video and audio format. 

Mastercard and The Future of Money: Crypto, AI Agents & Digital Payments with Ling Hai

In this episode, we’re exploring just how useful generative AI (genAI) is when it comes to spreadsheets; what needs to happen by 18 November when it comes to Companies House ID verification; and how the OBR comes to its conclusions.

LLMs and spreadsheets, Companies House IDV, and the OBR’s role

A weekly podcast dissecting the pulse of business, technology & media in Asia. Hear our host interviewing leading journalists, senior executives, respectable authors & thinkers, entrepreneurs & thought leaders to discuss the most important issues that move and shake the business landscape in the Asia Pacific. The show is originally created and hosted by Bernard Leong.

Unlock the secrets of data mastery with Shailendra, a 27-year veteran in AI, ML, and Data Science, driving AU$ 6 Billion in transformative value. As the author of 'Making Money out of Data,' their strategies redefine digital success. With expertise honed at IBM and Accenture, they drive innovation and data monetization. Explore how loyalty programs like Flybuys and Everyday Rewards revolutionize business—connect with Shaily today.

Bruno Flaven has been a Project Manager in a wide variety of Internet (Mobile, Website) for 20 years now. Since 2023, Bruno Flaven is working mainly on AI.

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New tracks tagged #Generative AI