Snowflake’s VP of AI on the Cost, Data, and Future of AI

AI feels instant. Ask a question, get an answer. But behind every answer is data, computing power, a choice of models, and a real cost.

In this episode of Machine Dreams, Snowflake VP of AI Baris Gultekin joins Sam Adebayo and Leah Stern to unpack what it actually takes to make AI work at scale, why there is no AI strategy without a data strategy, and why the biggest model isn’t always the best one.

Baris has worked on AI since his early days at Google, long before the current boom. We talk about how far the technology has come, where it still falls short, and what happens next as AI becomes capable of working on increasingly complex tasks on its own.