Sabree Primus
On January 18, Delaware State University had the opportunity to host FICO Chief Analytics Officer, Dr. Scott Zoldi. The FICO Educational Analytics Challenge was created for students to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion in data science. Dr. Zoldi presented an in-person lecture on campus, around Responsible AI and discuss difficult problems with students. Following his presentation, I had the chance to do a brief interview about the future of data analytics and AI.
Question: How has AI shaped the future of data analytics?
Answer: AI has shaped data analysis to the extent that it offers us the opportunity to learn things about data that humans typically cannot understand on their own. Data and relationships in large amounts of data are very complex, and so most human beings can’t spend time finding all the relationships and so these algorithms basically go to all the data, look at all kinds of combinations of relationships and brings them to light, so we can get new insights from data that we didn’t have before, and that information will then lead to better models and, eventually, better decisions. Think of it as an extremely powerful tool for exposing things that aren’t obvious to us and that work with data on a daily basis, from a human perspective. We get the data and we can then build better models from it.
Question: Can you describe the importance of companies like FICO reaching audiences like Delaware State University students?
Answer: For FICO, it’s one of those things that’s very important to us. We want to hear many different perspectives on how to address potential data issues, as well as how to identify and be sensitive to these issues. Part of it is having the right representation in these data science problems. FICO has enormous diversity in its workforce today, but we want to strengthen and expand it. One way to expand this is to get student perspectives, especially HBCU students, on these bias and data science topics. For us, it’s a complement, this point of view, which gives us more perspectives so that we can learn from the students, and the students learn from us. It’s a kind of symbiotic relationship. In addition to this, these students will be the next group of practitioners in the industry, to groom and prepare them so that they can be as successful as possible in their careers.
Question: What are the career paths of students specializing in data analysis?
I think in general we will see that data science, analytics and machine learning will all be extremely important areas. The world around us is being digitized. Data is everywhere, so what are the current avenues? I think it will be a part of every career going forward, whether it’s marketing, building predictive models like financial services, or even things like sports analytics.
We work with teams who want to improve their results thanks to suspected sports results. I think perhaps the best way to think about it is that every career we have will involve data and the need to make better decisions. So the fact that these students are experts in how to use this data and learn from it will benefit them if they take a more traditional route like in the banking industry or the marketing industry, and even non-traditional avenues like sports analytics if they have some there.
Question: With the rapid technological advancements in our society, in the next 10 years, what do you see changing in your field?
Well, that’s a great question. The GPT chat, for example, caught everyone’s attention. So what I see in the next 10 years is that our ability to solve more difficult problems will increase dramatically. We will have the capacity to consume more data and we will have the capacity to build more complex machines. It is a very good thing. I also think that as a society we will be more careful with our technology. This means we will prescribe the types of models that are transparent, fair and accountable.
I see some trends. We will see incredible new advances in AI and machine learning capable of replicating human tasks and at the same time we will see another focus on how we want to constrain technology so that we feel comfortable with it and we make sure it is fair. . I think there will be a lot of attention there. Another trend over the next 10 years will be that more and more people understand AI and make sure they know how AI is used to evaluate them or make decisions about them.
I imagine in the next 10 years it will be less of something popular and interesting and cool and more of something that everyone takes seriously because it will impact many aspects of their lives. I also expect a lot of people will look at this and say this is a technology I need to know about and I would like to know whether or not AI was used in this decision and how. It depends on how the models are constructed.
5. If you could describe your experience of over 25 years in 4 words, what would they be?
Innovative, exciting, valued and creative.
FICO provides students with the opportunity to access their data scientists for technical/project support and mentoring opportunities. Additionally, the program provides financial support to each participating HBCU, enhancing their analytics degree programs and guiding students after graduation toward sustainable careers.
