Emerging Pod E2: Building technology teams in deep tech | David Sully @Advai

An interview on the Emerging Podcast with David Sully, Advai CEO, who draws attention to the failure rates of AI (that nobody likes to talk about!). 

With a rich background that includes headhunting and working in the Foreign Office, David shares nuggets of wisdom on how he thinks about building data science teams, what is the most important quality that candidates can demonstrate, and how he builds a culture of effective and open communication, inspired from the ML Ops lifecycle. 

He overviews how computer vision systems 'see' differently to human beings. How small filter or texture changes can dramatically change a model's successful identification or classification of something. This difference in input interpretation creates a problem with managing these systems. He discusses the challenge in the context of Advai's ability to detect these vulnerabilites and communicate them to key stakeholders. 

Established in 2020, Advai is a leading UK Deep Tech specialist focussed on AI Safety and Security. We test and evaluate Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning systems, enabling our customers to assure their Large Language Models, Computer Vision and other AI-enabled technologies for deployment in business-critical or regulated environments. 

Our tooling stress-tests, measures and improves AI robustness and real world performance, finding reliable operating boundaries and creating early warning systems to predict natural or adversarial issues. As one of the most successful companies to have come through the Defence and Security Accelerator, we work with both the UK Ministry of Defence and a range of safety-conscious enterprises.

Advai is a proud partner of the UK Government’s Frontier AI Taskforce, the research unit behind the world's first global AI Safety Summit.

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