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© 2021 Thoughtworks
How to FAIL in AI
Utterly, badly, consistently

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© 2022 Thoughtworks
About me
2
2011
Started
as a dev
in IB
2013
Joined a
startup-like
firm as UI
dev
2017
Moved as
ProMa to
fintech
2019
Won a few
awards in
blogging,
published my
book
2022
Working on a
cutting-edge
data mesh
implementation
2015 2021
Started
ProMing
award-nomina
ted e-Learning
product
Joined Tw as
Data ProMa

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© 2022 Thoughtworks
AI failures & why this deck
3
Bicameral doesn’t scale- CoE
centers cannot effectively learn
and apply data principles
Lack of feedback loops-
Insights have no clear way of
making it back to the business
General lack of authentic,
shareable, high-quality data
Fragmented space of data and
AI, inundated with technlogy
Vendor lock-in once a tool is
finalized

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© 2022 Thoughtworks
But wait, no!
4
Sometimes, it’s hard to
know where to start
Lack of business
readiness to be
changed
4
Actual implementation
is fraught with
multiple vendors and
hence, the politics
that comes with it :)
AI/ML is STILL a
new world of
unknown to
many
There is a TON of problems that occur
way BEFORE the more talked about
problems. These are cultural, human
and avoidable

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© 2021 Thoughtworks
We will
look at
stories!

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© 2021 Thoughtworks
And
some…
learnings!

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© 2021 Thoughtworks 7
Pre-cursor story- Establishing the pattern
Problem statement(s):
We want to:
Be AI/ML driven
Apply neural networks
Build a data platform
Create a data mesh
Create a data science toolbox
Do you see a problem?

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© 2022 Thoughtworks | Confidential
Story 1
It’s personal(ization)
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© 2021 Thoughtworks 9
It’s personal(ization)
A Fortune 100 healthcare-insurance
company
Partnerships with 500+ pharmacy
chains in the US
Owner of several patented products
and formulae
Client context

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© 2021 Thoughtworks 10
It’s personal(ization)
When customers visit our apps or
websites, they see a very generic
experience.
We have good amount of data on the
customer, but we are not putting it to use.
Hence, we want to do personalization!
To improve the quality of experience and
to offer better products and services
Client problem statement

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© 2021 Thoughtworks 11
Let’s data science and AI the heck out of this!
What we did
It’s personal(ization)

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© 2021 Thoughtworks 12
Let’s even present them journeys- to start with the “end” in mind
What we did
It’s personal(ization)

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© 2021 Thoughtworks 13
Nothing happened!!
The AI/ML engagement never took off
Apart from a few PoCs, the customer never got around
to actually implementing anything
The result
It’s personal(ization)

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© 2021 Thoughtworks 14
It’s personal(ization)
What do you think happened?
Did they not have funds?
Was tooling the challenge?
Where did we go wrong?

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© 2021 Thoughtworks 15
It’s personal(ization)
COTS, COTS, COTS!
The data isn’t in one place!
Big plans = scary plans!
The reveal

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© 2022 Thoughtworks | Confidential
Story 2
The strongest blizzard starts with a single Snowflake
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© 2021 Thoughtworks 17
The strongest blizzard starts with a single Snowflake
A chain of 100+ retail stores in South
America
Recent forays into FinTech
Monopoly in the SA market
Plans to have a centre in Turkey soon
Client’s AI/ML engagement had been
smoothly proceeding for ~1 year
Client context

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© 2021 Thoughtworks 18
The strongest blizzard starts with a single Snowflake
Client says, “Mr. expert, your Presto is slowing us down
It is getting in the way of being data-driven
It is truly slow and not valuable
Can you do something about it?”
Problem statement

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© 2021 Thoughtworks 19
The strongest blizzard starts with a single Snowflake
Presto is an open source SQL query engine
that's fast, reliable, and efficient at scale.
Use Presto to run interactive/ad hoc queries at
sub-second performance for your high volume apps.
More context

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© 2021 Thoughtworks 20
The architecture
The strongest blizzard starts with a single Snowflake

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© 2021 Thoughtworks 21
What did we do?
The strongest blizzard starts with a single Snowflake
A PoC to compare Presto and other data tools!

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© 2021 Thoughtworks 22
What did we find?
The strongest blizzard starts with a single Snowflake
Presto was actually equally good if not better!
Queries ran with the expected performance
The AI/ML use cases were perfectly served with Presto

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© 2021 Thoughtworks 23
The result
The strongest blizzard starts with a single Snowflake
Client killed the engagement
Let’s replace Presto with Snowflake!
And even then- their problems were
not solved and we lost the business!

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© 2021 Thoughtworks 24
The strongest blizzard starts with a single Snowflake
Where did we go wrong?
Can you guess what happened?
Was our evaluation wrong?
Was Snowflake actually better?
Was Presto actually bad?

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© 2021 Thoughtworks 25
The reveal
The strongest blizzard starts with a single Snowflake
Query writing
Resources
Influence

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© 2022 Thoughtworks | Confidential
Story 3
Can(not)cel
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© 2021 Thoughtworks 27
Can(not)cel
A very popular fitness chain based in
the UK and Europe
Serves millions of gym goers
Awarded as most affordable fitness
center five times in a row
En route to Fortune 100
Client context

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© 2021 Thoughtworks 28
Can(not)cel
UK has put a law about cancellations!
We have to allow people to digitally cancel
Earlier, we made them jump through hoops
But we cannot do that anymore!
How can we enable a smooth cancellation process and predict the number of
cancellations we will have using some models?
Problem statement

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© 2021 Thoughtworks 29
Can(not)cel
We got to make some design and process recommendations!
What did we do

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© 2021 Thoughtworks 30
Can(not)cel
Oh this is it! We will show them how great we are! We also started building models
Present findings!

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© 2021 Thoughtworks 31
Can(not)cel
They wouldn’t bite it!
The entire cancellation piece just lay stuck.
The cancellation law became a nightmare to adhere to
as a result
The result

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© 2021 Thoughtworks 32
Can(not)cel
Where did we go wrong?
Can you guess what happened?
Did we not apply AI/ML at the
beginning?
Was doing user journeys bad?
Was there not executive backing?

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© 2021 Thoughtworks 33
Can(not)cel
The “sleeping dogs”
The reveal

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© 2022 Thoughtworks | Confidential
Story 4
Less is more
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© 2021 Thoughtworks 35
Less is more
An international NGO based out of
Austria
Works on organising disease control
and eradication drives
Used AI/ML models during Covid to
predict the spread of the virus
Client context

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© 2021 Thoughtworks 36
Our analysts have difficulty in finding right datasets
No ready sandbox to actually play with data
No way to explore data
Problem statement
Less is more

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© 2021 Thoughtworks 37
Let’s have a data science sandbox
Introduce a lakehouse that the sandbox can talk to
Enable CDC for large databases
Run PoCs with multiple databases
What did we do
Less is more

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© 2021 Thoughtworks 38
Data science sandbox works well
We are able to access large datasets and enable AI/ML engineers to run their
experiements
Early promise!
Less is more

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© 2021 Thoughtworks 39
The platform was slow to be adopted
Auditors found frequent issues with the models
We heard reports of “confusion”
The result
Less is more

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© 2021 Thoughtworks 40
Where did we go wrong?
Can you guess what happened?
Was the data not enough?
Did we need to think about
governance?
Less is more

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© 2021 Thoughtworks 41
The “reference” data sets
The reveal
Less is more

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© 2022 Thoughtworks | Confidential
Thank you