SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER 2025HR TECH OUTLOOK8In My OpinionOlly joined Curinos in 2023 and leads the company's Technology team, focused on helping financial institutions attract, retain and grow more profitable customer relationships; by leveraging AI-based decisioning tools, predictive analytics and Curinos vast proprietary data. Prior to Curinos, Olly held enterprise executive roles leading technology teams in Data & Machine Learning Platforms, Personalization, Marketing Technology and Analytics. Olly was also Founder, CEO of Amplero prior to its acquisition by Novantas; where he helped invent the core technology, established and grew the team and built an investable financial plan and then led the business through spinout and multiple venture capital funding rounds. A Journey from Early Machine Learning to Big Data InnovationsI think careers are all about being ready with the right skills when the time comes to catch a "wave". I was lucky to be a Physicist in the mid-1990s when some of the early work underpinning what we now call Machine Learning and AI was done and had the privilege of being a Master's Student of Bayesian Machine Learning pioneer Prof. Sir David MacKay and PhD student of 2024 Nobel Prize winner, Prof. John J. Hopfield. I would say there have been 4 "waves" of AI, of which I have had the privilege of being around for 3! I published my first paper on "The Nonnegative Boltzmann Machine" a Generative AI model for natural language, handwriting and human face images in back in 1999 ­ deemed "interesting, but not very useful" by reviewers at the time! I went on to focus on novel approaches for solving optimization problems at the heart of training ML and AI models, leading me to invent a type of Quantum Computer, now in use by Google, Lockheed and 3-letter government agencies!The push to demonstrate interesting applications of these technologies led me towards a career in applying machine learning to the world of burgeoning Big Data, enabling opportunities to fuel businesses in first-of applications to Location Intelligence, Advertising Technology and Marketing Technology and resulting in 43 patents. Today billions of people experience technologies I have developed on their phones, in their car and even on TikTok!As the world continues to learn, data is the fuel for intelligent decision-making, whether by humans or machines ­ Curinos is at the heart of banking data in North America; leveraging it into our software solutions that deliver on our mission to leverage proprietary data, decision tools and A.I. to help our clients optimize their go-to-market decisions. A natural fit for my background and expertise.Ensuring Compliance and Security in AIFinancial institutions rightly operate in a highly regulated environment, in which managing data privacy and security and addressing and controlling for bias and disparate impact INNOVATING WITH AI: INSIGHTS AND STRATEGIES FOR SUCCESSOlly DownsOlly Downs, Chief Technology & AI Officer, CurinosBy
< Page 7 | Page 9 >