Top AI Execs to Watch

Melvin Greer, Intel Corp.

Melvin Greer is chief data scientist, Americas at Intel Corp., where he builds Intel’s data science platform through artificial intelligence and machine learning to accelerate transformation of data into a strategic asset. In his role, he supports the public sector as well as the major U.S. industries, i.e. financial services, energy, oil, gas, hospitality and retail. He is a professor teaching AI and a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and U.S. National Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine, GUIRR. He participates in Data for Democracy, an organization developing a code of AI ethics, for data scientists, by data scientists, focused on addressing the legal, ethical and societal implications associated with AI adoption.

Why Watch: Over the next 12-18 months, look for Greer to lead enterprisewide AI strategy projects which assist government agencies harness the power of their data and accelerate innovation in military and citizen service delivery.

Intel’s development of AI in health and life science is designed to help federal agencies, physicians and researchers securely share private clinical, genomic and biometric data. Greer drives adoption of computer, object and image recognition technology, which enhances baggage and passenger screening and speeds up deep learning applications at the edge. Also, look for his work in advancing code and workload optimization on Intel silicon architectures.

“CPUs will continue to dominate training of AI algorithms,” Greer said. “You will also see a move from general purpose silicon to ASICs — application specific integrated circuits. We have extremely aggressive plans for new memory and storage capabilities at the chip level, and we are focused on the internet of things at the edge. The trend is to move compute to where the data is, and that will require a new way of thinking about being able to analyze data at the edge in a low power, high-performance CPU construct.”

Through a Commerce Department’s National Technical Information Service contract, Intel is helping shape AI adoption and implementation strategies through its role as one of the first 34 companies participating in governmentwide initiatives focused on data science and AI.

As privacy concerns increase with the growing availability of public data from social media platforms, Greer sees an increased focus on transparency and explainable AI. Data is the fuel that drives AI and we can expect to see an increased emphasis on data standards and guidelines that help identify and discourage bias in AI.

“I’m encouraged that more and more people are engaging in this discussion about the legal, ethical and societal implications associated with AI adoption,” he added. “Everyone from legal folks, ethicists, social scientists, academicians, and of course, data science practitioners, are all having these conversations, and that’s an extremely good thing.”