About Plain AI

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is taking the world by storm right now. It’s not an outside bet to say it will fundamentally change all of our lives in some way in the next few years. AI is not new, however, it’s been around for a couple of decades and it’s likely you’ve already interacted with it at some point in your everyday life; think credit applications, fraud checks, insurance quotes or more recently, Siri, Alexa Google Maps… That said, Generative AI, has been like rocket fuel for AI industry. Since Open AI launched their product ChatGPT, AI has become an everyday household conversation.

I’m Simon Cooper and have worked at various software companies for the last 20 years. I’m currently in the Customer Success team at an AI software company called Dataiku where we provide enterprise businesses with a platform that allows them to bring AI into every part of the business, no matter your skills.

The purpose of this blog is to ignore a lot of the current hype around AI, and bring you an everyday perspective from the conversations and experiences I have at work. I’m not a skilled data scientist or programmer, so you won’t find me going into details about the latest LLM or comparing the benefits of the XGBoost algorithm versus Random Forest, but what I will write about is more suitable for the rest of us, those working in business trying to work out how to understand and take advantage of all of this incredible technology that is rapidly changing the world.

Most of my articles will be free to read, but on occasion, I will write longer posts that require more research and thought, and to access those, you’ll need to be a paid subscriber.

Words are my own; the images are AI-generated.

Some suggested posts to start off with:

Demystifying AI: Part 1
This is the first of a three part series where I’ll cover some basic concepts of Artificial Intelligence (AI). By the end of the series, you should have a better understanding of: * A clear understanding of what AI is (and isn’t) * Have an appreciation of what are some
Getting a Job in the AI Industry: Part 1
You don’t have to be a data scientist or a technical expert to get a job in the AI industry. Here I explain some of the key concepts you would do well to educate yourself on.
The Data Catalog
Having the right people, access the right data is vital to a successful AI project, and a Data Catalog is key in any data strategy.