Reversing the Curse: The 80 / 20 Split In AI Projects
The USAF (a current VIA customer), as referenced in this 2020 congressional report, has prioritized funds to automate analyst workflows to, “directly tackle the challenge of analysts spending 80% of their time searching for data and 20% making sense of the data.”
Interviews with analysts and our earliest experiences working with customers’ data has confirmed this 80/20 split. We even created a chart in our earliest VIA introductory materials:
To address this common challenge, VIA has been investing heavily in using our own AI and software development skills to reverse this ratio. We may never eliminate data gathering and cleaning tasks, but we can strive to reduce this to 20% of a project and thereby boost the productivity of data scientists. SWEET is the most recent example of how our TAC™ platform accomplishes this.
We’re keen to hear from you about whether the 80/20 split is still the norm or if you are seeing it decrease (or *gasp* increase). Suggestions on tools or solutions that you would like to see are genuinely welcome.
