Main takeaways from the Conference on New Techniques and Technologies for Statistics (NTTS)

Eric Anvar, Head of Smart at the OECD participated at the Conference on New Techniques and Technologies for Statistics (NTTS) in Brussels 6-10 March 2023 and shared his main takeaways from the inspiring keynote speech by Marko Grobelnik (AI Lab, Jozef Stefan Institute).

Grobelnik referenced OECD’s work on AI (https://oecd.ai/en/) and illustrated brilliantly the potential value of AI (and specifically, generative AI) in official statistics, especially with the emergence of a) new, conversational, web search paradigms, and b) AI-assisted data management (especially in areas of algorithms coding and data curation).

A few articles analyse opportunities and pitfalls of such use cases (see for example How Generative AI models such as ChatGPT can be (Mis)Used in SPC Practice, Education, and Research? An Exploratory Study or The Role of ChatGPT in Data Science: How AI-Assisted Conversational Interfaces Are Revolutionizing the Field).

We believe SDMX, and the SIS-CCommunity in particular, may help unlock the potential value, as experimented in the StatsBot initiative or envisioned as to Why SDMX Matters:

“By offering a common conceptual toolkit to build model-driven data architectures, data experiences and data ecosystems, SDMX offers a unique opportunity for the global official statistics community – and beyond – to develop: Better quality, better connected and more accessible data products; More efficient and automated data pipelines; Cooperative business models enabling co-investment and co-innovation…”

As AI meets SDMX, we should expect an accelerated pace of innovation combining SDMX semantics with AI. SIS-CC is a good place to start – do not hesitate to come with thoughts and suggestions! Congratulations to Eurostat colleagues for organising such an interesting conference. If you missed it, all recordings are available on the event website.