Cloudera using AI to boost data & analytics development

Cloudera has announced the introduction of three new AI-driven assistants aimed at accelerating the development of data, analytics, and AI business applications.

This comes as recent research indicates that 84% of businesses in the Asia-Pacific region are integrating AI technologies into their processes to achieve measurable business impact.

The newly launched AI assistants are designed to enable companies to fast-track the production of trusted data, analytics, and AI applications while extending the scope of employees who can use these tools. This, in turn, is expected to drive AI initiatives more quickly across entire businesses and allow more users to access data-driven insights in their daily roles.

Vini Cardoso, Chief Technology Officer at Cloudera ANZ, highlighted the increasing use of AI by Australian organisations to foster business innovation and improve efficiency. He stated, "Australian organisations are deploying AI as an accelerant to drive business innovation and improve efficiency. However, as game-changing as AI is, for many business leaders, establishing trust in AI is still a barrier to entry."

"Recognising this, we have harnessed our decade of AI experience and capabilities directly into creating this developers’ toolbox. Not only does it give businesses the ‘easy button’ to start using AI Assistant technologies in their own AI application development efforts, but also the trust in their tools, mitigating risk and ensuring safe AI systems."

The new products include the SQL AI Assistant, an AI Chatbot in Cloudera Data Visualisation, and Cloudera Copilot for Cloudera Machine Learning. The SQL AI Assistant aims to simplify the complexities associated with writing intricate SQL queries. Users can describe their data needs in plain language, and the assistant employs advanced techniques such as prompt engineering and retrieval augmented generation (RAG) to find the pertinent data, write, optimise, and explain the query in easy-to-understand terms.

The AI Chatbot within Cloudera Data Visualisation is designed for direct interaction with enterprise data to provide contextualised business insights beyond typical BI dashboards. By residing within Cloudera's dashboard and reports, the chatbot uses the context of the available data to deliver more actionable insights to enterprises. Users can ask questions in plain language, and the chatbot will intelligently match these to the relevant data and visuals.

Cloudera Copilot for Cloudera Machine Learning incorporates pre-trained large language models and is built to navigate common challenges in deploying AI and ML models in production.

Integrated with over 130 models and datasets from Hugging Face, Copilot supports the end-to-end development process of AI applications, expediting data science, model development, and fine-tuning to accelerate machine learning development and the realisation of business value.

According to Andrew Brust from Blue Badge Insights, the recent advancements highlight the potential and growing pains enterprises face in leveraging AI for business applications.

"The AI and ML technological gold rush has brought limitless potential for enterprises, but we’re still seeing significant growing pains across industries when it comes to driving valuable insights from AI. For organisations to capitalise fully on this new frontier, enterprises need to effectively harness AI for business applications. That’s where Cloudera excels, especially as the company continues to infuse AI throughout the platform," he said.

Earlier this month, Cloudera expanded its AI and ML capabilities by acquiring Verta’s Operational AI Platform. The acquisition further solidifies the company’s leadership in AI and ML by embedding AI assistants for SQL, BI, and ML directly into its platform.

Dipto Chakravarty, Chief Product Officer at Cloudera added: "As AI advances, Cloudera is committed to staying ahead of our customers’ needs."

"Our new AI-driven assistants eliminate barriers, enabling every user to harness the power of AI across their organisations."