Andrew Ng

• Former Chief scientist at Baidu, researched AI and big-data

• Co-founder of Coursera, created the python machine learning course that was watched over 100,000 times

• Founded and led the Google Brain Deep learning project

• Associate professor at Stanford

http://www.andrewng.org/

My favorite Data Scientist due to his work with Coursera. Through this MOOC machine learning has reached a lot more people bringing it into the mainstream. This lead to wider adaptation of machine learning into business and changed it from a purely academic topic to a business one.

Reason

Fighting back against asymmetrical threat runaway effect 

- https://techcrunch.com/2015/01/11/leaked-palantir-doc-reveals-uses-specific-functions-and-key-clients/
- https://www.wired.com/story/how-peter-thiels-secretive-data-company-pushed-into-policing/
- https://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/inside-palantir-silicon-valleys-most-secretive-company?utm_term=.dnb9924D2#.ld0LLX4gX
- https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2016/09/how-palantir-is-taking-over-new-york-city/

Samuel Reading, a former Marine who works in Afghanistan for NEK Advanced Securities Group, a U.S. military contractor, was quoted in the document as saying It’s the combination of every analytical tool you could ever dream of. You will know every single bad guy in your area.”

Palantir's Gotham & Metropolis software allow organisations to combine all their different datasets in a clean interface that is easily used by non-technical field agents.

With access to technology becoming cheaper and easier the threats that security agencies have to deal with become harder to stop. Technology has, in general, an asymmetric impact on threats. To counter this potential runaway effect good, real-time data monitoring is necessary for preventive or near-preventive actions. Palantir's software creates a solid way to use the massive trove of data of governments and other security organisations to accomplish this.

Clients include the LAPD, SEC, CIA, DEA, NSA, DOD and more