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Yaniv Altshuler

Founder & CEO, Alphabiome · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

founderscientistacademicexecutiveauthorweb.media.mit.edu/~yanival ↗Wikipedia ↗

Alongside MIT Professor Alex Pentland, he co-developed the computational theory of social physics and co-founded Endor, an MIT spin-out for predictive analytics. He has authored multiple books, including Applied Swarm Intelligence, and currently leads Alphabiome, developing structured biological data layers for AI.

9statements → 7claims → 2claims resolved → 4/5average certainty → 2.44/5average debate potential →

0 supported 1 partly supported 1 contradicted 5 not checkable as stated how the 7 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

7 assertions · 1 opinion · 1 insight · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 7 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 2 are resolved, and 5 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 Yaniv argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable contradicted claim

Assertion Contradicted
Endor outperformed nearly 1,000 teams on a Kaggle benchmark
“Almost a thousand teams participated. And they were given three months, and you can see that the team who won the first place after us, they submitted almost 200 models, so they actually worked pretty hard, and as you can see here, our accuracy is significantl…”
Yaniv Altshuler Apr 6, 2017 ▶ 15:08 Rethinking Predictive Analytics // Yaniv Altshuler, Endor (FirstMark's Data Driven)

How they sound: speaking style how? →

235 words/min while actually speaking · 66.7 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Yaniv Altshuler: 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: 3,403 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 →

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

Insight
Altshuler: Deep learning is inadequate for predicting dynamic human behavior
“Deep learning requires a lot of data, relatively speaking, and therefore, by definition, cannot detect recent changes in the data, emerging patterns, ah, and therefore, it's, ah, really, really, ah, inadequate to predict human behavior that is, ah, actually do…”
Yaniv Altshuler Apr 6, 2017 ▶ 6:12 Rethinking Predictive Analytics // Yaniv Altshuler, Endor (FirstMark's Data Driven)
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Altshuler: Mathematical invariances guaranteed in all structured human data
“There is a set of mathematical invariances that Are guaranteed to happen in any structured human data.”
Yaniv Altshuler Apr 6, 2017 ▶ 7:21 Rethinking Predictive Analytics // Yaniv Altshuler, Endor (FirstMark's Data Driven)
Assertion Partly supported
Altshuler: Modern machine learning technologies were developed roughly 50 years ago
“All the technologies that we have today were developed around 50 years ago, plus minus a decade. Even deep learning that is so trendy today, it's basically very large neural networks. Concepts from the fifties matured around the seventies.”
Yaniv Altshuler Apr 6, 2017 ▶ 2:19 Rethinking Predictive Analytics // Yaniv Altshuler, Endor (FirstMark's Data Driven)
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Altshuler: Endor can run predictive analytics on one week of data
“In addition, because we use social physics as a prior to the data, we can analyze data from very short periods of time. We don't need to analyze five years worth of data. In some cases, even one week is enough”
Yaniv Altshuler Apr 6, 2017 ▶ 10:47 Rethinking Predictive Analytics // Yaniv Altshuler, Endor (FirstMark's Data Driven)
Assertion Contradicted
Endor outperformed nearly 1,000 teams on a Kaggle benchmark
“Almost a thousand teams participated. And they were given three months, and you can see that the team who won the first place after us, they submitted almost 200 models, so they actually worked pretty hard, and as you can see here, our accuracy is significantl…”
Yaniv Altshuler Apr 6, 2017 ▶ 15:08 Rethinking Predictive Analytics // Yaniv Altshuler, Endor (FirstMark's Data Driven)
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Altshuler: Domain and ML expertise can be replaced with computation
“Can we replace domain expertise and machine learning expertise with computation? Our answer, yes we can, and it's not even so computationally intense, but it would require us to take a very, very different approach about data.”
Yaniv Altshuler Apr 6, 2017 ▶ 15:55 Rethinking Predictive Analytics // Yaniv Altshuler, Endor (FirstMark's Data Driven)
Opinion
Altshuler: Internal data science teams cannot be replaced by automated platforms
“I actually don't think this is the case because I think that nothing and no one can replace internal teams of data scientists and of analytics people because they are the only ones who are familiar with data and their business, and therefore they are the only …”
Yaniv Altshuler Apr 6, 2017 ▶ 22:55 Rethinking Predictive Analytics // Yaniv Altshuler, Endor (FirstMark's Data Driven)
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Altshuler: Endor can build predictive models with 20 to 30 positive labels
“We can also work with very, very, ah, smallest, so, even 20, 30 positive, ah, Ah, samples, a sample of, ah, 20, 30 positive labels could be enough.”
Yaniv Altshuler Apr 6, 2017 ▶ 23:53 Rethinking Predictive Analytics // Yaniv Altshuler, Endor (FirstMark's Data Driven)
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Endor tripled loan sales for a credit card company client
“The result is tripling the amount of loans they actually sell. Three times more loans actually sell in production with our prediction.”
Yaniv Altshuler Apr 6, 2017 ▶ 12:39 Rethinking Predictive Analytics // Yaniv Altshuler, Endor (FirstMark's Data Driven)

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Rethinking Predictive Analytics // Yaniv Altshuler, Endor (FirstMark's Data Driven) Apr 6, 2017 18m
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