August 29, 2025 • 8 mins
Yasmeen Ahmad is Google Cloud's Managing Director of Data Cloud. She is among the group's top leaders on the database and data analytics team, which runs enterprise platforms like AlloyDB and BigQuery. That gives her keen insight into the evolution of large language models for data analysis and the growing number of use cases for Generative Artificial Intelligence,or “Gen AI,” a type of AI that can create new content like text, images, music and code, by learning patterns from large datasets.
Yasmeen examines generative AI’s impact on data scientists and data developers with Tim Stenovec, Norah Mulinda and Bloomberg Intelligence Global Head of Technology Research Mandeep Singh on Bloomberg Businessweek Daily.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. You're listening to Bloomberg
Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Stenovek on Bloomberg Radio. Well,
Alphabet Shares, the parent company of Google, hitting a new
all time high today. You'll remember that last month the
(00:20):
company reported Google Cloud revenue and operating income topped analysts projections.
Our own Bloomberg Intelligence is Mandeep sing writing after earnings
that Google's increase capex you buy ten billion dollars for
the full year suggests cloud segment growth is likely to
remain above thirty percent through the second half of the year.
We've got with us a man Deep Singh's Global head
(00:41):
of Technology Research at Bloomberg Intelligence, also joining us Yasmin Ahmed,
Managing Director of Data Cloud at Google Cloud. Both of
them join us here in the Bloomberg Interactive Broker Studio.
I should note Yasmin will be featured on an upcoming
episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast with man Deep Seing.
Be sure to check that out where you get your podcasts.
(01:02):
I want to actually start with you, Man Deep, and
just set the scene for us a little bit about
why you want to speak to someone like Yasmine on
the podcast. I mean, look, she's sitting right here by
the way she is and so she can hear you.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
I thank you for the shout out on the tech
Test Disruptors episode. Look, Google Cloud, I mean, if it
was a separate company, you know, fifty billion dollar rund
rate segment growing at over thirty percent, just think about it,
they could exceed you know, one hundred billion dollars in
revenue over the next two three years. So clearly there
(01:37):
is a lot of exciting things that are going on.
And talking to Yasmin, it was pretty obvious that, you know,
they have a lot of products at the database level
that are doing very well when it comes to AI
agents and just how companies are looking at deploying generative AI.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
So let's go right there. Yeah, I mean, come on
in to the conversation and talk a little bit about
what Mandeep was saying when it comes to the AI
agents and how they're utilizing Google Cloud right now.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
So AI agents are transforming for our customers their business
as they deploy. Now, these highly sophisticated agents that can
optimize entire supply chains, that can transform how customer experience looks.
If you take Wayfair for example, they're doing visual search,
so as a customer, you can upload a picture. That
(02:29):
picture is used to find similar products in the catalog
and bring those back. So Wayfair are seeing a fifteen
percent improvement in conversion from that kind of visual search.
That's why you see customers looking at how can we
deploy more of these agents and new AI apps across
the enterprise. So how has Jenny I also impacting the
(02:51):
work for data scientists and data developers On that end,
we see huge impact. I'll actually go back to my
experience when I first came out of university. I was
a software engineer and I got given all of the
mundane tasks refactoring the TECHTA, writing code, lambs, code tests,
and it felt like a penance you had to pay. Well,
(03:13):
with code agents and data engineering agents and data science agents,
we can take all of that mundane task away and
allow developers, data scientists, data engineers to actually focus on
solving business problems. In fact, Honeywell have said the use
of these coding agents from Google have enabled their developers
(03:34):
to operate seventy percent faster, so huge amounts of efficiency gain,
but also just an elevated role.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
For these humans, So yes, Ben, can I jump in there?
So what do you think customers are replacing here? Given
you know, I mean all these sounds great, but if
you're an enterprise, you have to find budgets to you know,
deploy all this at scale, and generative AI, as we know,
is quite expensive. So what is it that they are
(04:01):
displacing to invest in generative AI?
Speaker 3 (04:05):
I think generatively I is not just about augmenting now
new technology and bolting on more costs. In fact, the
most transformative use cases actually get to the heart of
a business and rewire the way work gets done. So
if we look at some of our customers and use cases.
For example, Optis, they are Australia's second largest tech telecommunications company.
(04:30):
They've now deployed a networking agent that is actually scanning
all of the network signals, identifying potential issues in the future,
and creating service now tickets three weeks ahead of a
network issue actually happening. This is rewiring how an organization
works and it helps them avoid future cost future complexity
(04:51):
that they would have to deal with.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
So you are convinced on the ROI of this, Jenny,
I spend that we debate every day whether there is enough.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
This is the question we always ask you about.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Right, because she interfaces with the customers day in and
day out. Do you convince on that.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
I am convinced because I heard the stories from our customers.
But also recently we published a blog six hundred plus
use cases from our customer ecosystem tangible use cases delivering
ROI and value. However, I also recognize many organizations are
super anxious. There's a lot of anxiety around the spend
(05:31):
of on Jenny I about how to get to that ROI.
The customers I see succeeding and moving the fastest are
those that are getting out into pilots and trying things out,
finding the low hanging fruit, and then building on topic.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Agents are not hallucinating for the customers that you have deployed.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Well, Hallucination a huge concern for CIOs as they deploy
this technology. But this is one of the core challenges
we recognize two years so go at Google. So when
we built AI into our data cloud, that's actually one
of the first challenges we set out to solve. Is
AI must be grounded in business context and business data,
(06:13):
i e. If it can't find the answer from the
business data it can't hallucinate, It actually needs to ask
you a question back and disambiguing. So solving for trust
and AI has been a core part of the data
and a cloud strategy.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
You mentioned anxiety around hallucinations, but there's also anxiety around
job displacement as a result of this technology. I hosted
a dinner in Atlanta at an event that we did recently,
Bloomberg Business Value of AI Event, and by far the
topic that dominated the conversation was like, what is the
labor landscape going to look like in the coming years
(06:50):
as these agents displace workers even more so than they
have now, how do you think about that?
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Being part of Google, we're one hundred and eighty thousand
calls leagues across the globe, we actually get to see
those dynamics playing out. So on one hand, we have engineers.
Even at Google, we're seeing thirty to forty percent of
our code now being written by Gemini.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Yeah, so the entry level coders aren't needed anymore.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
So we don't need to hire as many developers as
we potentially historically had to do to ramp up to
where the business is growing. However, on the other hand,
AI has a transformational impact on business outcomes. So IHD
the Hotels Group, they're actually hiring developers to build the
next generation of conversational booking experiences where consumers can come
(07:38):
and chat and book experience holiday experiences direct. So I
think this is what I see this as a job's shifting,
where skills are shifting, the types of roles are potentially shifting.
It's a recalibration across the enterprise.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
I think recalibration is certainly fair to say Yasmin Ahma,
Managing Director Data Cloud at Google Cloud, Mandeep Singh, Global
Head of Technology Research at Bloomberg Intelligence. Both are here
in the Bloomberg Interactive Broker's studio. That just a taste
of what is to come on the Tech Disruptors podcast
with Mandeep Singh. For more insights from Mandy and the
entire Bloomberg Intelligence team, check out the Tech Disruptors podcast.
(08:19):
It features conversations with thought leaders and management teams on
disruptive trends in the tech world. It covers everything from
AI to EVS, to VR and beyond. You can find
it on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get your podcast
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. You're listening to Bloomberg
Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Stenovek on Bloomberg Radio. Well,
Alphabet Shares, the parent company of Google, hitting a new
all time high today. You'll remember that last month the
(00:20):
company reported Google Cloud revenue and operating income topped analysts projections.
Our own Bloomberg Intelligence is Mandeep sing writing after earnings
that Google's increase capex you buy ten billion dollars for
the full year suggests cloud segment growth is likely to
remain above thirty percent through the second half of the year.
We've got with us a man Deep Singh's Global head
(00:41):
of Technology Research at Bloomberg Intelligence, also joining us Yasmin Ahmed,
Managing Director of Data Cloud at Google Cloud. Both of
them join us here in the Bloomberg Interactive Broker Studio.
I should note Yasmin will be featured on an upcoming
episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast with man Deep Seing.
Be sure to check that out where you get your podcasts.
(01:02):
I want to actually start with you, Man Deep, and
just set the scene for us a little bit about
why you want to speak to someone like Yasmine on
the podcast. I mean, look, she's sitting right here by
the way she is and so she can hear you.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
I thank you for the shout out on the tech
Test Disruptors episode. Look, Google Cloud, I mean, if it
was a separate company, you know, fifty billion dollar rund
rate segment growing at over thirty percent, just think about it,
they could exceed you know, one hundred billion dollars in
revenue over the next two three years. So clearly there
(01:37):
is a lot of exciting things that are going on.
And talking to Yasmin, it was pretty obvious that, you know,
they have a lot of products at the database level
that are doing very well when it comes to AI
agents and just how companies are looking at deploying generative AI.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
So let's go right there. Yeah, I mean, come on
in to the conversation and talk a little bit about
what Mandeep was saying when it comes to the AI
agents and how they're utilizing Google Cloud right now.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
So AI agents are transforming for our customers their business
as they deploy. Now, these highly sophisticated agents that can
optimize entire supply chains, that can transform how customer experience looks.
If you take Wayfair for example, they're doing visual search,
so as a customer, you can upload a picture. That
(02:29):
picture is used to find similar products in the catalog
and bring those back. So Wayfair are seeing a fifteen
percent improvement in conversion from that kind of visual search.
That's why you see customers looking at how can we
deploy more of these agents and new AI apps across
the enterprise. So how has Jenny I also impacting the
(02:51):
work for data scientists and data developers On that end,
we see huge impact. I'll actually go back to my
experience when I first came out of university. I was
a software engineer and I got given all of the
mundane tasks refactoring the TECHTA, writing code, lambs, code tests,
and it felt like a penance you had to pay. Well,
(03:13):
with code agents and data engineering agents and data science agents,
we can take all of that mundane task away and
allow developers, data scientists, data engineers to actually focus on
solving business problems. In fact, Honeywell have said the use
of these coding agents from Google have enabled their developers
(03:34):
to operate seventy percent faster, so huge amounts of efficiency gain,
but also just an elevated role.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
For these humans, So yes, Ben, can I jump in there?
So what do you think customers are replacing here? Given
you know, I mean all these sounds great, but if
you're an enterprise, you have to find budgets to you know,
deploy all this at scale, and generative AI, as we know,
is quite expensive. So what is it that they are
(04:01):
displacing to invest in generative AI?
Speaker 3 (04:05):
I think generatively I is not just about augmenting now
new technology and bolting on more costs. In fact, the
most transformative use cases actually get to the heart of
a business and rewire the way work gets done. So
if we look at some of our customers and use cases.
For example, Optis, they are Australia's second largest tech telecommunications company.
(04:30):
They've now deployed a networking agent that is actually scanning
all of the network signals, identifying potential issues in the future,
and creating service now tickets three weeks ahead of a
network issue actually happening. This is rewiring how an organization
works and it helps them avoid future cost future complexity
(04:51):
that they would have to deal with.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
So you are convinced on the ROI of this, Jenny,
I spend that we debate every day whether there is enough.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
This is the question we always ask you about.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Right, because she interfaces with the customers day in and
day out. Do you convince on that.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
I am convinced because I heard the stories from our customers.
But also recently we published a blog six hundred plus
use cases from our customer ecosystem tangible use cases delivering
ROI and value. However, I also recognize many organizations are
super anxious. There's a lot of anxiety around the spend
(05:31):
of on Jenny I about how to get to that ROI.
The customers I see succeeding and moving the fastest are
those that are getting out into pilots and trying things out,
finding the low hanging fruit, and then building on topic.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Agents are not hallucinating for the customers that you have deployed.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Well, Hallucination a huge concern for CIOs as they deploy
this technology. But this is one of the core challenges
we recognize two years so go at Google. So when
we built AI into our data cloud, that's actually one
of the first challenges we set out to solve. Is
AI must be grounded in business context and business data,
(06:13):
i e. If it can't find the answer from the
business data it can't hallucinate, It actually needs to ask
you a question back and disambiguing. So solving for trust
and AI has been a core part of the data
and a cloud strategy.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
You mentioned anxiety around hallucinations, but there's also anxiety around
job displacement as a result of this technology. I hosted
a dinner in Atlanta at an event that we did recently,
Bloomberg Business Value of AI Event, and by far the
topic that dominated the conversation was like, what is the
labor landscape going to look like in the coming years
(06:50):
as these agents displace workers even more so than they
have now, how do you think about that?
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Being part of Google, we're one hundred and eighty thousand
calls leagues across the globe, we actually get to see
those dynamics playing out. So on one hand, we have engineers.
Even at Google, we're seeing thirty to forty percent of
our code now being written by Gemini.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Yeah, so the entry level coders aren't needed anymore.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
So we don't need to hire as many developers as
we potentially historically had to do to ramp up to
where the business is growing. However, on the other hand,
AI has a transformational impact on business outcomes. So IHD
the Hotels Group, they're actually hiring developers to build the
next generation of conversational booking experiences where consumers can come
(07:38):
and chat and book experience holiday experiences direct. So I
think this is what I see this as a job's shifting,
where skills are shifting, the types of roles are potentially shifting.
It's a recalibration across the enterprise.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
I think recalibration is certainly fair to say Yasmin Ahma,
Managing Director Data Cloud at Google Cloud, Mandeep Singh, Global
Head of Technology Research at Bloomberg Intelligence. Both are here
in the Bloomberg Interactive Broker's studio. That just a taste
of what is to come on the Tech Disruptors podcast
with Mandeep Singh. For more insights from Mandy and the
entire Bloomberg Intelligence team, check out the Tech Disruptors podcast.
(08:19):
It features conversations with thought leaders and management teams on
disruptive trends in the tech world. It covers everything from
AI to EVS, to VR and beyond. You can find
it on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get your podcast
Hosts And Creators
Tim Stenovec
Carol Massar
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