It was a pleasure to speak with the Data Driven Government (DDG) community, a fantastic group dedicated to advancing a data-driven culture within our public institutions. The session was an opportunity to reflect on how much the AI landscape has changed in just a few short years.
I framed the discussion around my experience building the AI and technology for Timna, the AI research platform of Israel’s Ministry of Health. I asked the audience to imagine with me: if we were starting that ambitious project from scratch today, how could Generative AI revolutionize the most challenging parts of the research lifecycle?
We explored how GenAI could accelerate each phase:
- Idea: Using GenAI tools to shape research questions with supercharged literature reviews.
- Data: Deploying agents to discover, profile, clean, and enable deeper access for domain experts.
- Compute: Leveraging on-demand optimization to keep infrastructure costs lean and efficient.
- Prototyping & Publishing: Having agents draft code, visualizations, and even initial research papers.
The most rewarding part was the “Conversations on AI” session that followed, where researchers shared their own real-world challenges and swapped stories. These conversations are invaluable, and I am grateful to Dafna Meller and Alma Gadot Perez for inviting me and driving this important initiative forward.