Interview with Max Dosad, Principal Consultant Data Science, Harnham - Speaker at Global AI conference - Jan 17 - 19 2018 Posted on : Jan 08 - 2018

We feature speakers at Global Artificial Intelligence Conference - Jan 17 - 19 2018 - Santa clara - CA to catch up and find out what he or she is working on now and what's coming next. This week we're talking to Max Dosad, Principal Consultant Data Science, Harnham (How To Win The War For Data Science Talent)

Interview with Max Dosad

1. Tell us about yourself and your background.

I’m originally from the UK and started life out working as a Chef, after many missed Christmases, New Years Eve’s, Valentines and Mothers Day’s, I decided to step out of the kitchen and pretty much just fell in to recruitment to be honest. I absolutely fell in love with it very quickly, working with people is incredibly rewarding and having recruited in the analytics space for a few years now, I think that I’ve been able to build some great relationships and built some pretty impressive teams. I now head up Data Science recruitment at Harnham, we’re the worlds largest data science and analytics recruitment business, having been founded in London over a decade ago. We started in San Francisco around 18 months ago now and have gone from strength to strength, working with great clients and some phenomenal talent. Every day I have the privilege of working with inspiring data scientists and helping them secure their dream moves.

2. What have you been working on recently?

Recently we’ve worked on a number of build out programs for some very exciting companies, ranging from data driven start-ups that challenge the understanding and perception of “real time” – through to publicly traded tech giants and pretty much everything in between!

3. Where are we now today in terms of the state of artificial intelligence, and where do you think we’ll go over the next five years?

I think that Artificial Intelligence is going to change the entire working landscape over the next 5 years. Large scale automation is already forcing people to change their habits and to retrain in order to not get left behind. Right now though, we need to assess and understand what is hype and what is real.

4. There is a negative perception around AI and even some leading technology folks have come out against it or saying that it’s actually potentially harmful to society. Where are you coming down on those discussions? How do you explain this in a way that maybe has a more positive beneficial impact for society?

I think that it can only be a good thing. AI is just the next step in automation and technological development – realistically the invention of the car changed the way that we travelled, the mobile phone changed the way that we communicate and AI is going to be the future of the way that we work. New ideas are always met with trepidation, however once you get through the noise, AI has existed for a long time in a variety of forms and will continue to evolve and develop. I think the outcomes will be almost overwhelmingly positive.

5. When you’re hiring, what types of people are you hiring? The job market for traditional programmers, engineers is  very difficult to get into AI space. Are you hiring from that talent pool or is that a different talent pool? In terms of talent, how do you go about ensuring you get the best AI people at your company?

My job is very different, I hire for other people and that’s the major focus of my talk. Talent pools are stretched and competition for talent hasn’t ever been fiercer. We need to look at how we can encourage larger diversity and invest more heavily in people to not only ensure retention, but to make sure that there is a clear path to success and a lifelong career path for aspiring data scientists.

6. Will progress in AI and robotics take away the majority of jobs currently done by humans? Which jobs are most at risk?

I think that initially, there will be a lot of the traditional “unskilled” labor that will be automated at first, you look at Tesla’s semi-trucks and the implications that they have for truck drivers, or what NLP can do for the automation of medical billing or claims processing etc. These will be the industries and the people that I believe will be impacted first through AI. Then you will get in to more skilled labor as machines become more capable and intelligent. Finally I think that artistic or humanistic fields will be the last to see any real form of automation – they’ll for sure see massive augmentation through the application of ML, however I’d like to think that the human element will always exist (or at least I hope so or I’m out of a job!!!)

7. When will AI systems become more intelligent than people?

That for me depends on what you define as intelligence, if you’re looking at playing a game of GO or Chess for example, we’re already there, however if you’re talking about being capable of doing everything that a human can do, I think that there isn’t as yet any massively common consensus on this, however a lot of the research that I’ve done points to around the 2040-2060 mark. That being said, I don’t think that machine’s will ever be able to surpass intelligence when you look at musical composition, writing a screenplay etc.

8. What are some of the best takeaways that the attendees can have from your "How To Win The War For Data Science Talent " talk?

My talk is directed around the actual process of attracting and securing great data science talent. Every hiring manager that I’ve spoken with has spoken with me around the struggles that they face in recruitment, approaching passive talent, finding talent that’s trying not to be found, and developing hiring processes that do their due diligence without taking so long that people fall through a pipeline. We’re going to talk about how to fix your hiring process and ensure that you can meet your goals for 2018 and beyond.