In the below, Dr Scott Zoldi, chief analytics officer at analytic software firm FICO, explains to Information Age why data science cowboys and citizen data scientists could cause catastrophic failures to a business' AI and analytics ambitions. Although the future will see fast-paced adoption and benefits driven by applying AI to all types of businesses, we will also see catastrophic failures due to the over-extension of analytic tools, and the rise of citizen data scientists and data science cowboys. The former does not have data science training but uses analytic tooling and methods to bring analytics into their businesses; the latter has data science training, but a disregard for the right way to handle AI. Citizen data scientists often use algorithms and technology they don't understand, which might result in inappropriate use of their AI tools; the risk from the data science cowboys is that they build AI models that may incorporate non-causal relationships learned from limited data, spurious correlations and outright bias -- which could have serious consequences for driverless car systems, for example. Today's AI threat stems from the efforts of both citizen data scientists and data scientist cowboys to tame complex machine learning algorithms for business outcomes.