(c) 2012 Pinar Ozger. pinar@pinarozger.com

We generally associate analytics with machines — as in machine learning, or artificial intelligence. But humans have to be part of the equation when it comes to interpreting and processing data if we want to get the most value we can out of it, argued Arnab Gupta, CEO and founder of Opera Solutions.

At Structure:Data 2012 Wednesday, Gupta said in an onstage interview that machines are “ultimately limited.” That’s why at Opera Solutions they’re working to take big data and make it small data so that humans can process information that’s accessible and easy to understand and ultimately make a final decision on how to use a piece of data. A “man and machine” hybrid process, he describes it.

The way analytics companies are now, said Gupta, they push out a ton of data, “but given the enormous amount of information, most corporations are massively constrained” in their ability to adequately process it all, he said.

The best hope, he said, is not necessarily getting more technical, data-smart people who can interpret it. It’s making data easier to interpret by regular folks.

“The real battlefield is ultimately, are you making data usable to people on the front line, to a person who is not technical … but it helps them do their job a lot better?”

The ability to do that, he acknowledged, is still a couple years away.

Watch the livestream of Structure:Data here.

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