AI is all about data, and the representation of the data matters strongly. But after focusing primarily on 8-bit integers and 32‑bit floating-point numbers, the industry is now looking at new formats.

Data scientists today face a perfect storm: an explosion of inconsistent, unstructured, multimodal data scattered across silos – and mounting pressure to turn it into accessible, AI-ready insights.

Fundamental changes in the way we work with data come along very rarely. For example, the database model that has remained the industry standard for decades—the relational database—was first conceived ...

Most people are familiar with data in the form of a spreadsheet, with labeled columns of different data types such as name, address, age, and so on. Databases work the same way, with each table laid ...