The CIO of the California Department of Conservation hopes predictive analytics and machine learning can help avoid future hazards.
"If we prevent just one hazard, that is worth it," Catherine Kendall said to Steve Towns of e.Republic at the California Tech Forum.
To harness that, the department has been hiring from the private and the public sector. Kendall discussed training employees well to keep up with technology and finding the right kinds of people to do the work.
"You know, data scientists are hard to come by because I'm pretty sure Google and Amazon own them all," Kendall said of seeking people to train computers for artificial-intelligence purposes.
The future might include business experts who are also technologists, Kendall said. "The generalist might go to a specialist."
This is the second interview with Kendall. The first can be seen here.
