DatAInnovators & Builders

DatAInnovators & Builders

By NexlaTechnology
Download on the App Store

DatAInnovators & Builders episodes

  • "AI build, Human verify, AI refine”: How CurieTech flipped the IT engineering workflow, with Ashish Thusoo

    Most IT teams burn months integrating business systems. Ashish Thusoo's agents at CurieTech AI deliver 70-80% productivity improvements by changing one thing: the loop shifts from human build, human verify, human refine to AI build, human verify, AI refine. That compression happens because machines can now build and refine while humans focus verification energy where it matters.

    From co-creating Apache Hive at Facebook to General Manager of AI at AWS, Ashish brings 25 years of infrastructure experience to automating IT engineering. CurieTech targets the reality most companies face: not building software products but making CRM, ERP, and financial systems talk to each other across 1,000+ business systems. His method treats production agent development as a data problem first. Build benchmarks, run systematic error analysis across every failure, then decide whether fixes need more context, fine-tuning, or expanded knowledge bases.

    Topics discussed:

    • Shifting from human build/verify/refine loops to AI build/human verify/AI refine workflow
    • Building benchmarks and eval sets before prototyping agents for production quality
    • Running painstaking error analysis on every agent mistake to classify root causes
    • Choosing between fine-tuning and RAG based on knowledge stability and response speed requirements
    • Creating synthetic datasets with statistical sampling methods for human verification loops
    • Handling multimodal enterprise data quality with task-specific metrics per workflow
    • Hiring engineers based on how they guide AI through problem decomposition
    • Automating version upgrades across 1,000+ business systems with reasoning-capable agents
    • Applying SaaS-era governance patterns to agent proliferation in enterprises
    • Maintaining speed as core entrepreneurial skill when technology shifts monthly not yearly
      • 56 min
    • Databricks' Robin Sutara On Why AI Training Fails - And Persona-Based Enablement That Works

      Robin Sutara is Field Chief Data Strategy Officer at Databricks, where she works with organizations facing a common problem: employees sit through AI training, check the box, then nothing changes. The issue isn't awareness. It's that a store manager, plant floor worker, and data scientist need completely different capabilities, but most organizations treat them identically.

      Robin breaks down why generic AI literacy programs fail to drive behavior change and how to build persona-specific enablement instead. She explains why your data teams need to sit with domain users (like riding in trucks with electric utility line workers) to understand their actual workflows, how to update performance KPIs to reinforce new behaviors, and why organizations should study their pandemic response as a template for AI transformation speed. The conversation covers JetBlue's production agentic systems, JP Morgan's executive-level AI representation, the Databricks AI Security Framework's 62 risk factors for prioritization, and the specific criteria for choosing which use cases to ship when data isn't perfect across your entire estate.

      Topics discussed:

      • Persona-based enablement replacing one-size-fits-all AI literacy programs
      • Sitting with domain users to translate AI capabilities into changed workflows
      • Updating performance KPIs and organizational processes to reinforce AI behaviors
      • Defining acceptable failure rates and safe experimentation spaces for pilots
      • Applying pandemic-era instant transformation tactics to AI adoption cycles
      • Prioritizing use cases where data foundations are ready while modernizing the rest
      • JetBlue's agentic systems aggregating weather, maintenance, staffing, and customer data
      • JP Morgan Chase's approach to AI representation at executive level
      • Databricks AI Security Framework's 62 risk factors for balancing innovation and controls
        • 44 min

      About DatAInnovators & Builders

      From the publisher's feed

      DatAInnovators & Builders features Chief Data Officers and data leaders sharing real strategies for conquering data complexity and building AI solutions that work. Host Saket Saurabh, CEO of…