Is Data-First AI the Next Big Thing?

We are roughly a decade removed from the beginnings of the modern machine learning (ML) platform, inspired largely by the growing ecosystem of open-source Python-based technologies for data scientists. It's a good time for us to reflect back upon the progress that has been made, highlight the major problems enterprises have with existing ML platforms, and discuss what the next generation of platforms will be like. As we'll discuss, we believe the next disruption in the ML platform market will be the growth of data-first AI platforms. It is sometimes easy to forget now (or, tragically, maybe it's all too real for some), but there was once a time when building machine learning models required a substantial amount of work. In days not too far gone, this would involve implementing your own algorithms, writing tons of code in the process, and hoping you make no crucial errors in translating academic work into a functional library.