Jeremy Achin

General Partner, Cortical Ventures · 1 appearance on the record.

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Jeremy Achin co-founded DataRobot in 2012 and served as its CEO for nine years, scaling the automated machine learning company into an enterprise AI unicorn. After stepping down in 2021, he co-founded the AI startup hOS and launched the venture capital firm Cortical Ventures.

9statements → 4claims → 2claims resolved → 3.89/5average certainty → 2.56/5average debate potential →

1 supported 0 partly supported 1 contradicted 2 not checkable as stated how the 4 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

1 prediction · 3 assertions · 2 opinions · 2 insights · 1 disclosure · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertions are the 4 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 2 are resolved, and 2 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Jeremy argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported

Achin: DataRobot employees held Kaggle's top rank almost continuously for three years

“Basically, over the last three years, somebody from our company has been number, ranked number one almost the entire time.”

Jeremy Achin Nov 23, 2015 ▶ 2:03 Black Boxes and Unicorns - DataRobot CEO Jeremy Achin

Their most notable contradicted claim

Assertion Contradicted

Achin: Non-data scientist advisor placed 5th in Kaggle competition using DataRobot

“One of our advisors, who's not a data scientist, knows nothing about insurance he came in fifth place. And this is out of six hundred-something people including thirty-something Liberty Mutual employees that have competed.”

Jeremy Achin Nov 23, 2015 ▶ 19:55 Black Boxes and Unicorns - DataRobot CEO Jeremy Achin

How they sound: speaking style how? →

260 words/min while actually speaking · 44.8 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Jeremy Achin: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews.

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 3,769 words across 1 episode of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

What they said9 Episodes1

Everything Jeremy Achin said on the MAD Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Opinion

Achin: Compliance is used to defend outdated, inaccurate regression models

“A word people use as a last resort to defend the status quo after they realize that their hundred variable regression model is an arbitrary representation of reality that is less accurate, robust, and interpretable than the modern, ah, alternatives.”

Jeremy Achin Nov 23, 2015 ▶ 11:03 Black Boxes and Unicorns - DataRobot CEO Jeremy Achin

Prediction Not checkable as stated

Achin: Automated tools and education will solve the data scientist shortage

“And, ah, the shortage of data scientists will be solved by a combination of pragmatic education, practical education, and, ah, tools that automate the modeling process and automate data science to levels which are, right now, probably most of us in the room th…”

Jeremy Achin Nov 23, 2015 ▶ 17:02 Black Boxes and Unicorns - DataRobot CEO Jeremy Achin

Insight

Achin: Complex machine learning models can be interpreted using modern techniques

“I would argue, though, that even very complicated models can be interpreted using modern techniques.”

Jeremy Achin Nov 23, 2015 ▶ 4:19 Black Boxes and Unicorns - DataRobot CEO Jeremy Achin

Opinion

Achin: 'Black box' label reflects fear of new technology

“It's a phrase people use when they're scared of technology they don't understand and want to keep doing the same thing they've been doing for the last 20 years.”

Jeremy Achin Nov 23, 2015 ▶ 4:37 Black Boxes and Unicorns - DataRobot CEO Jeremy Achin

Assertion Supported

Achin: DataRobot employees held Kaggle's top rank almost continuously for three years

“Basically, over the last three years, somebody from our company has been number, ranked number one almost the entire time.”

Jeremy Achin Nov 23, 2015 ▶ 2:03 Black Boxes and Unicorns - DataRobot CEO Jeremy Achin

Disclosure

Achin penalized job candidates for choosing the wrong modeling textbook

“I love this book so much that I would use it in interviews, so I, when somebody would come in for an interview, I would ask them, if you had to go on a desert island And do modeling consulting for the rest of your life, and you can bring one book, what would i…”

Jeremy Achin Nov 23, 2015 ▶ 10:00 Black Boxes and Unicorns - DataRobot CEO Jeremy Achin

Assertion Contradicted

Achin: Non-data scientist advisor placed 5th in Kaggle competition using DataRobot

Jeremy Achin Nov 23, 2015 ▶ 19:55 Black Boxes and Unicorns - DataRobot CEO Jeremy Achin

Insight

Achin: Gradient boosted trees perform best over 40% of the time

“Gradient boosted trees tends to be you know, the, one of the top algorithms, like 40 plus percent of the time.”

Jeremy Achin Nov 23, 2015 ▶ 21:27 Black Boxes and Unicorns - DataRobot CEO Jeremy Achin

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Achin: Large companies still employ armies of people manually building regression models

“But there's still armies of people mostly in big companies you know, building regression models manually, taking months to do that.”

Jeremy Achin Nov 23, 2015 ▶ 3:56 Black Boxes and Unicorns - DataRobot CEO Jeremy Achin

Appearances (1)