‘Notable and Quotable’ Stout Head of AI Fotis Konstantinidis
‘Notable and Quotable’
Stout Head of AI Fotis Konstantinidis
TIM LEEMASTER
Stout Artificial Intelligence and Digital Transformation Practice Leader Fotis Konstantinidis
This week in our occasional “Notable and Quotable” coverage Eye on A.I. spoke to Fotis Konstantinidis the new head of AI at boutique investment bank and consultancy Stout.
Konstantinidis started at Stout five months ago and is creating a practice that includes digital data strategy, data engineering where data is aggregated and collected, core machine learning for prediction and forecasting and automation and robotic processes.
Konstantinidis is based in Los Angeles and oversees a team of ten in Michigan and New York.
The team currently spends about 70% of its time with clients and about 30% on internal projects at Stout. One of the internal projects at Stout centered around using natural language processing for search.
Konstantinidis in his own words
“The data lake is a great marketing term [but] using data lakes straight from the cloud is not as simple as you think and there are lots of hurdles.”
“We have so much data it’s more like a swamp with no insights . . . so you need to think of the way we transform the data store. Make sure you have some kind of metadata foundational modelling first as your data grows.”
“Both human and AI work the best when they work together, not 24/7, just when the machine needs the feedback to resolve ambiguity - a feedback loop- then the AI becomes better and won’t make the same mistake again.”
“The algorithm side is easy . . . the most time is spent in data gathering, extracting and collecting.”
“The problem is not prediction and algorithms, the problems are in aggregating the data.”
The Firm
Chicago-based Stout was founded in 1991, by former PwC executive Craige Stout, and has over 475 employees. It earned USD $163m in revenue last year, up 21% from $135m the year before.
The firm operates 24 offices globally, the newest opened this month in London.
The Konstantinidis Resume
Stout, Head of Artificial Intelligence, 2019
CO-OP Financial Services, Senior Vice President, Fraud Products, 2017
McKinsey & Company, Senior Digital Manager / Associate Partner, IoT/Payments, 2017
Visa, Senior Director, Innovation & Strategic Partnerships, Connected Car, 2015
Accenture, Senior Manager, Silicon Valley Lead in IoT and Mobile Payments, 2011
mEgo, chief technology officer, 2007
Moderati (now Skyrockit), Technical Lead, 2005
Lotus Interworks, Technical Lead, 2004
Laboratory of Neuro Imaging (LONI), Computational Brain Researcher, 2002