data
What It Means
Data is any collection of facts, numbers, text, images, or other information that your organization gathers, stores, or processes. It's the raw material that feeds into your AI systems, analytics, and business decisions. Think of it as digital ingredients that can be measured, analyzed, and transformed into insights.
Why Chief AI Officers Care
Data quality directly determines AI model performance - garbage in means garbage out, making data governance critical for successful AI initiatives. CAIOs must ensure data compliance with regulations like GDPR while managing data access, security, and lineage across the organization. Poor data management can derail AI projects, create bias in models, and expose the company to regulatory penalties.
Real-World Example
A retail company's customer data includes purchase history, website clicks, demographic information, and support interactions stored across multiple systems. When training an AI recommendation engine, the CAIO discovers that 30% of customer records have missing zip codes and outdated email addresses, requiring a data cleansing initiative before the AI project can proceed effectively.
Common Confusion
People often confuse data with information or insights, but data is just the raw facts before analysis adds context and meaning. Another common mistake is treating all data as equally valuable when in reality, data quality, relevance, and timeliness vary dramatically across different sources.
Industry-Specific Applications
See how this term applies to healthcare, finance, manufacturing, government, tech, and insurance.
Healthcare: In healthcare, data encompasses patient records, medical imaging, lab results, clinical notes, genomic sequences, and re...
Finance: In finance, data encompasses transactional records, market prices, customer financial profiles, risk metrics, and regula...
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Includes:
- 6 industry-specific applications
- Relevant regulations by sector
- Real compliance scenarios
- Implementation guidance
Technical Definitions
NISTNational Institute of Standards and Technology
"Characteristics or information, usually numerical, that are collected through observation. "Source: OECD
"re-interpretable representation of information in a formalized manner suitable for communication, interpretation or processing"Source: aime_measurement_2022, citing ISO/IEC TR 24029-1
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