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Nick Ulmer
Nick Ulmer

Nick Ulmer, CAP

Principal OR Analyst
CANA LLC
Bio

Nick Ulmer is a Logistics, Supply Chain, and Operations Research practitioner splitting his time between teaching and working at CANA LLC. Nick is a retired U.S. Navy Officer and was the inaugural President of the INFORMS Veterans Interest Forum.  He is a Certified Analytics Professional and current president-elect of the Military Operations Research Society.


The Dark Underbelly of AI in the Cloud

The proliferation of cloud solutions with artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities offers amazing opportunities to data analysts and other Operations Research (OR) adjacent professionals to leverage cloud storage arrays with central processing units (CPUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs) paired with low/no-code applications capable of running complex machine learning algorithms on big data sets. To curb runaway costs, we must increase the baseline talent required to work in this environment. A dramatic increase is necessary in core OR professional skill sets with governance-created guardrails is necessary to control compute costs while continuing to accelerate AI adoption. Locally deployed and secure Small Language Models (SLMs) and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) should be considered alternatives that can provide lower-cost solutions to routinely solicited queries and help inform organizational decisions.