Sydney, Australia, July 31, 2023

Gartner Data & Analytics Summit Sydney: Day 1 Highlights

We are bringing you news and highlights from the Gartner Data & Analytics Summit 2023, taking place this week in Sydney, Australia. Below is a collection of the key announcements and insights coming out of the conference.

On Day 1 of the conference, we are highlighting this year’s opening keynote, the effects of dangerous data and the enterprise implications of generative AI.

Gartner Opening Keynote: Lead for Purpose. Connect With Trust. Make an Impact.

Presented by Sally Parker, Senior Director Analyst and Adam Ronthal, VP Analyst, Gartner

Data and analytics (D&A) leaders can deliver increasing value to their organizations. In this session, Sally Parker, Senior Director Analyst and Adam Ronthal, VP Analyst at Gartner, highlighted new ways they can connect with stakeholders, address skills shortages and lead with purpose to ensure the data-driven transformation required for success.

Key Takeaways

“The most common roadblocks to the success of D&A initiatives are all human-related challenges, such as skills shortages, lack of business engagement, difficulty accepting change and poor data literacy throughout the organization.”
“D&A leaders are still not speaking the language of business, but are under intense pressure to demonstrate the value of initiatives to other business peers and executives.”
“Much of what D&A leaders do is strategy enablement, which by definition plays out over a longer period of time. A new way to talk about investments in D&A is needed to show future impact and how they meet the needs of multiple stakeholders.”
“Think about speaking the language of business. Now more than ever, D&A leaders must have a translation layer between initiatives and the organization’s mission-critical priorities.”
“Make business stakeholders the hero in your business value story by meeting their KPIs and enabling their objectives by connecting them with D&A insights.”
“Culture is the reason we say we fail. Even the highest ranking executives in your organization can’t change the whole culture, but you can change the culture around you to a data-driven one.”

Dangerous Data: Can’t Live With It, Can’t Live Without It

Presented by Guido De Simoni, VP Analyst, Gartner

Dangerous data is data that exposes the company to the threat of serious legal or brand impact, but is unavoidably collected for other business purposes. In this session, Guido De Simoni, VP Analyst at Gartner, explained why the ability to identify data liability and not just treat data as a pure asset is critical to managing data and analytics risk.

Key Takeaways

“Growing amounts of data are routinely collected for uncontroversial, legitimate business purposes, but this possession can expose you to unanticipated legal, ethical or brand risks, like any other asset.”
“Audit your data and identify what you know about your customers and products.”
“Gather a team of intellectually creative, ethically concerned colleagues to brainstorm the worst-case real-world outcomes having data could reveal.”
“Together with your legal team, identify if there is legal or regulatory exposure to “knowing” the outcomes identified in the brainstorming session.”
“For idealistic, socially responsible organizations, start thinking about how your data can be used for social benefit.”
“For follow-the-money pragmatists, work with third-party organizations to create legal separation from dangerous data and aggressively delete once it has served its purpose.”
“For organizations in the middle, develop processes that will allow you to react in professionally defensible ways to the crises your data may cause in the future.”

The Enterprise Implications of ChatGPT and Generative AI

Presented by Tong Zhang, Senior Director Analyst, Gartner

Due to their massive scale and broad use-case applicability, foundation models such as ChatGPT, are a significant AI advancement, but the major risks they pose aren’t fully understood. In this session, Tong Zhang, Senior Director Analyst at Gartner, discussed the benefits, risks and opportunities of these models to tap their business value and minimize risk.

Key Takeaways

“ChatGPT, and the family of generative AI foundation models, is the first widely known AI technology that challenges the one trait humans always thought they would have over machines: creativity.”
“Although a significant advance, foundation models still require careful training, and can deliver unacceptable results due to their black-box nature.”
“Foundation models represent a huge step change in the field of AI due to their massive pre-training. This makes them effective at few-shot and zero-shot learning, enabling them to be versatile.”
Five best practices to implement when starting with generative AI:
- Create a position paper outlining the benefits, risks, opportunities and deployment roadmap for foundational models.
- Choose task-specific pretrained models, given the steep training costs and complexity with data management.
- Instill responsible AI practices to prevent misuse and mitigate unintentional behavior.
- Facilitate seamless machine-human interaction through UX redesign, feedback loop and education on prompt engineering.
- Designate an incubation team.

Tune back in tomorrow for more updates from the conference.

It’s not too late to join the conference!

About Gartner

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