Dr. Melvin Greer’s doctorate in data science has long been a conversation-starter — or, more accurately, a conversation-ender — at dinner parties. Despite his best efforts to explain its significance, the topic is often met with polite but distant stares. He always knew data science was crucial, but wondered if the public's appreciation for it would ever catch up.
That's starting to change.
“The most exciting thing about data science is that more people are engaged in a conversation around it,” Greer told The Forecast, a few months prior to retiring as an Intel Fellow and Chief Data Scientist.
Thanks to the rise of data security and artificial intelligence, the very topics that once caused eyes to glaze over when Dr. Greer talked about them have now become public discourse. Suddenly, the concepts he has championed for years are not just relevant; they're urgent.
“I’m in an Uber on the way to the airport, and the driver has a legitimate question about autonomous driving, or security in AI, or whether he should use any of these new tools that he hears about on TV,” Greer said. “Teenagers are now involved in the discussion around data science. It’s really great.”
With the rapid rise of generative AI, data science has become a much-sought-after skillset, and experts like Greer are in high demand. After leaving his post at Intel, he stepped into the role of senior vice president and Chief AI Officer at TechElevate Innovation Labs, an advisory and innovation firm focused on adoption of AI at scale. He also serves as a senior fellow and advisor to the FBI, sits on the board of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, holds a fellowship at the National Cybersecurity Institute, serves as a senior policy advisor at the University of California, Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy, and teaches a course on the practical applications of artificial intelligence at Johns Hopkins University.
Greer sat down with The Forecast at Nutanix’s 2025 .NEXT event in Washington, D.C., where he talked about the ethics of AI, how the technology factors into geopolitical strategy, and even how he is teaching his own children to use AI tools responsibly.
‘Six Months Feels Like Five Years’
Generative AI is so ubiquitous now, Greer said, that people sometimes forget how recently the technology came into widespread use.
“What happens in six months with AI feels like five years, because something new is always happening, and the technology is always morphing,” he said. “It’s pretty amazing when you think that the primary generative AI tool most people think about has only been in existence for a little over two years. It’s absolutely unbelievable.”
Greer noted that these rapid changes have made it difficult for business and IT leaders to keep up not only with the technology, but also with the larger questions surrounding its use.
“It’s really important to consider that people are now investigating the ethical and responsible things that go along with their adoption strategy,” he said. “Senior executives often tell me they want me to help them adopt AI in a way that doesn’t require them to go to jail.”
While Greer may have been exaggerating for comic effect, the anxiety he cites is real. Often, organizations lack visibility into exactly how AI tools are storing data or using it to train models, potentially creating privacy and compliance problems. Because these models are trained on data created by humans, they can reflect and even amplify historical or systemic biases related to gender, ethnicity, and other factors. And “hallucinations” (the whole-cloth invention of nonsense when a model doesn’t have access to real information) are a well-known and persistent problem with AI models, creating issues around trust and accuracy.
“Everybody is now engaged in a discussion about being able to adopt the technology, but we also have to be ethical and responsible about it,” Greer said.
The impact of AI is being felt not only in business, Greer said, but also in government, with four of the past five U.S. presidential administrations issuing executive orders on the use of government data to support AI.
“Government agencies are focused on using AI to improve citizen services at lower cost and to drive national security,” he said. “These are all really intractable problems.”
AI Impacts Across Society
One factor driving the adoption of AI, Greer said, is the creator economy. Social media has gone from a fun distraction to big business, and creators and influencers are rapidly experimenting with ways to use AI to generate content ideas, speed up production, and drive engagement.
“When TikTok first hit America, it was a tool to show new dance moves and talk about pop subjects,” Greer said. “But now, that exact same tool generates millions and billions of dollars as part of a business. That tool has moved from just a social media platform to a geopolitical platform that powers economic engines. It is really important to understand how the creator economy is having a material impact on the adoption of AI generally.”
Greer pointed out that the AI revolution extends beyond the business world and into the realm of daily life, even influencing the ways young children complete their school assignments.
“In my personal life, I encourage my children to use AI at every level, whether it is gaining ideas for a passion project, trying to go to university, or whether it is trying to understand a very complex historical reference point,” Greer said.
“They’re studying American history, and they’re trying to understand what drove Americans to go to war with one another. It’s important to use these advanced tools to get nuanced understandings of subjects that might otherwise be difficult to comprehend.”
Asked why society needs AI, Greer provided a blunt, surprising answer with an important qualification.
“We don’t need it,” he said. “But it provides a force multiplier for some of the activities that we really want to do. An individual will create about three terabytes of data every day in their personal life. The goal is for them to figure out where to store it, how to secure it, how to find it, and how to share it with other people…and then how to use it to do something great.”
Calvin Hennick is a contributing writer. His work appears in BizTech, Engineering Inc., The Boston Globe Magazine and elsewhere. He is also the author of Once More to the Rodeo: A Memoir. Follow him @CalvinHennick.
Ken Kaplan contributed to this story.
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