#29 Carlos Zetina: AI Is Only as Smart as Your Documentation

Make better business decisions with data and AI—subscribe to The Decision Intelligence Lab Newsletter at ⁠⁠https://decisionintelligencelab.subst.... Dr. Carlos Zetina — industrial engineer, ex-Amazon research scientist, and pre-sales consultant at FICO — walks through how he thinks about problems before solving them. Drawing on his PhD in optimization, years in risk consulting, and three intense years at Amazon, Carlos shares the frameworks he uses to make sure organizations work on the right problems, not just the loudest ones. The conversation covers what pre-sales engineering actually is, why documentation is the foundation of good AI adoption, and how the rise of generative AI is shifting the most valuable work from authoring to monitoring. Chapters 0:00 - Preview 1:00 - Meet Carlos Zetina & career overview 5:23 - What working in Amazon is actually like 7:26 - How to identify & prioritize the right problems before building anything 10:22 - Operational planning cadence 14:13 - Decision framing: Why Carlos's first ML model completely missed the mark 17:32 - What is pre-sales engineering? 19:30 - Push vs pull systems 23:59 - Should you join pre-sales? 27:41 - Post-sale knowledge transfer 33:50 - Gen AI & why writing culture becomes a strategic asset 37:45 - The future of OR and data science with GenAI Follow the show Apple: ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/in/podcast... Spotify: ⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/0lFoAVK... Connect with guest Carlos Zetina: ⁠  / cazetina   Connect with hosts Prof. Vijay Mehrotra (University of San Francisco): ⁠  / ⁠   Prof. Michael Watson (Northwestern University): ⁠  / michael-watson-07600a1⁠   About the podcast The Decision Intelligence Lab podcast delivers real-world insights for data professionals, business leaders, and anyone seeking to leverage data & AI for smarter decision-making & successful business outcomes. For business inquiries, email at ⁠[email protected]⁠