Just Eat's Alberto Rey Villaverde on Machine Learning, A.I., and Bridging the Imagination Gap (pt. 1)

This is Part 1 of Cindi's interview with Alberto Rey Villaverde, the Chief Data Officer at British online food order and delivery service Just Eat.

On this episode, Alberto and Cindi discuss how machine learning allows data to speak for itself, why artificial intelligence is more effective when it's led with the guiding hand of a human than without, three components crucial to the success of data products and services, adjusting business practices and expectations during pandemics and economic downturns, the talent gap versus the imagination gap in the data industry from a European perspective, data lakes versus data warehouses, and much more.

Key Takeaways:

• AI allows the data to speak for itself. Alberto's application of simple neural networking algorithms to massive sets of data efficiently and consistently optimized price points and saved his company money, justifying an expanded budget for AI adoption and development.
• AI + humans is better than AI alone. AI augments human abilities, but it doesn't replace them. In unprecedented times (as we're experiencing on multiple fronts in 2020), algorithms especially rely on human imagination to fill in the blanks where there's no historical data to inform an outcome.
• Three components crucial to the success of your data products and services. How Alberto sees access, model, and delivery fitting together to justify the cost of innovation necessary to implement new technologies and methodologies for handling data.

More about Alberto:

Alberto Rey Villaverde is the Chief Data Officer at British online food order and delivery service Just Eat. He is a pricing and revenue management professional with extensive experience within the data science field, particularly on BI and advanced analytics, data mining, machine learning techniques, and scenario modeling.

Alberto started his career in advanced analytics as a member of the pricing and revenue management team at easyJet, working in the development of one of the most advanced pricing engines within the industry, where his team pioneered the implementation of machine learning techniques to drive pricing. He holds an MSc in data mining and an MBA from Cranfield University.

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Listen to Part 2 of Cindi's interview with Alberto here.

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The Data Chief is presented by our friends at ThoughtSpot. Searching through your company’s data for insights doesn’t have to be complicated. With ThoughtSpot, anyone in your organization can easily answer their own data questions, find the facts, and make better, faster decisions. Learn more at thoughtspot.com. 

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For full show notes and more, go to thedatachief.com.

Hear more from Cindi Howson here. Sponsored by ThoughtSpot.