8/1/23, 8:38 PM The Role of an AI Architect

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What Are AI Architects and What Do

They Do?


January 19, 2022
Contributor: Ashutosh Gupta

Enterprise leaders can create the role to help build a robust

enterprisewide architecture for AI.

Artificial intelligence (https://www.gartner.com/en/topics/artificial-intelligence)

(AI) initiatives often stall because of poor architectural choices, a lack of preparation
and the inability to scale. Enterprise architecture and technology innovation leaders
can create an AI architect role to help build a robust enterprisewide architecture for
AI.

Through 2023, Gartner estimates that 50% of IT leaders will struggle to move their AI
projects past the proof of concept (POC) stage into production. To increase the
chances of success, (https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/5-habits-of-
organizations-with-successful-ai) organizations can hire an AI architect to help
define the architectural strategy, create workflows, identify toolsets and scale
artificial intelligence (https://www.gartner.com/en/articles/the-4-trends-that-
prevail-on-the-gartner-hype-cycle-for-ai-2021) operations.

Download now: Reinforce Your Artificial Intelligence (AI) Ecosystem

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8/1/23, 8:38 PM The Role of an AI Architect

Who are AI architects?

“AI architects are the curators and owners of the AI architecture strategy. They are
the glue between data scientists, data engineers, developers, operations (DevOps,
DataOps, MLOps) and business unit leaders to govern and scale the AI initiatives,”
says Arun Chandrasekaran, (https://www.gartner.com/en/experts/arun-
chandrasekaran) Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner.

They work closely with enterprise and solution architects, but unlike the enterprise
architecture (https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/enterprise-
architectures-role-in-building-a-data-driven-organization) team, which is
responsible for a broad set of functions, they are laser-focused on building a robust
enterprisewide architecture for AI.

What do AI architects do?

AI has a diverse range of use cases (https://www.gartner.com/en/doc/730970-
what-is-artificial-intelligence-seeing-through-the-hype-and-focusing-on-business-
value) and deployment models, so AI architects need a wide array of capabilities:

Collaborate with data scientists and other AI professionals to augment digital

transformation efforts by identifying and piloting use cases. Discuss the
feasibility of use cases along with architectural design with business teams and
translate the vision of business leaders into realistic technical implementation. At
the same time, bring attention to misaligned initiatives and impractical use cases.
Align technical implementation with existing and future requirements by
gathering inputs from multiple stakeholders — business users, data scientists,
security professionals, data engineers and analysts, and those in IT operations —
and developing processes and products based on the inputs.
Play a key role in defining the AI architecture and selecting appropriate
technologies from a pool of open-source and commercial offerings. Select cloud,
on-premises or hybrid deployment models, and ensure new tools are well-
integrated with existing data management and analytics tools.
Audit AI tools and practices across data, models and software engineering with
a focus on continuous improvement. Ensure a feedback mechanism to assess AI
services, support model recalibration and retrain models.
Work closely with security and risk leaders to foresee and overturn risks, such
as training data poisoning, AI model theft and adversarial samples, ensuring
ethical AI (https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/how-to-prevent-ai-
dangers-with-ethical-ai) implementation and restoring trust in AI systems.
Remain acquainted with upcoming regulations and map them to best practices.

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8/1/23, 8:38 PM The Role of an AI Architect

What skills do AI architects need?

(https://emtemp.gcom.cloud/ngw/globalassets/en/articles/images/the-role-of-an-
ai-architect-0.png)

AI architects need a diverse set of skills that can be difficult to acquire in a short
time.

Technical skills include:

AI architecture and pipeline planning. Understand the workflow and pipeline
architectures of ML and deep learning
(https://www.gartner.com/en/topics/artificial-intelligence) workloads. An in-
depth knowledge of components and architectural trade-offs involved across the
data management, governance, model building, deployment and production
workflows of AI is a must.
Software engineering and DevOps principles, including knowledge of DevOps
workflows and tools, such as Git, containers, Kubernetes and CI/CD.

Data science and advanced analytics, including knowledge of advanced

analytics tools (such as SAS, R and Python) along with applied mathematics, ML
and Deep Learning frameworks (such as TensorFlow) and ML techniques (such as
random forest and neural networks).

Non-technical skills include:

Thought leadership. Be change agents to help the organization adopt an AI-
driven mindset. Take a pragmatic approach to the limitations and risks of AI, and
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8/1/23, 8:38 PM The Role of an AI Architect

project a realistic picture in front of IT executives who provide overall digital

thought leadership.

Collaborative mindset. To ensure that AI platforms deliver both business and

technical requirements, seek to collaborate effectively with data scientists, data
engineers, data analysts, ML engineers, other architects, business unit leaders
and CxOs (technical and nontechnical personnel), and harmonize the
relationships among them.

In short:

The growing diversity and urgency of artificial intelligence (AI) projects, products
and deployment models is creating the need for an AI architect role.
AI architects envision, build, deploy and operationalize an end-to-end machine
learning (ML) and AI pipeline.

AI architects can help build a robust enterprisewide architecture for AI and

collaborate with data scientists, data engineers, developers, operations and
security.

Experience Enterprise
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8/1/23, 8:38 PM The Role of an AI Architect

 Recommended resources for Gartner clients*:

What Do Artificial Intelligence Architects Do?
(https://www.gartner.com/document/4002780)
Machine Learning Engineer — A Role That Bridges the Gap Between Data
Science and IT (https://www.gartner.com/document/code/722846?
ref=authbody&refval=4002780)
Create a Data Strategy to Ensure Success in Machine Learning Initiatives
(https://www.gartner.com/document/code/741114?
ref=authbody&refval=4002780)

*Note that some documents may not be available to all Gartner clients.
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