The landscape of data is shifting beneath our feet. For years, the gold standard of business intelligence was the dashboard, a reliable way to visualize what happened in the past. But today, that is no longer enough. The modern professional must engineer systems that predict what will happen and provide answers as to why. AI is no longer a future concept; it is a reality that is here to stay, and those who do not master these tools risk being left behind. Are You AI-Ready? At

Retrieval-Augmented Generation and the Layers Beneath Your Data Author: Igor Alcantara What if your enterprise data had a subconscious? A deep, multilayered repository of memories. Some crisp and current, others buried in old documents or silos, waiting to be awakened. What if, instead of going through dashboards and PDFs, you could simply ask a question and get an intelligent, verified answer? Welcome to the world of Retrieval-Augmented Generation, or RAG, and welcome to the

Author: Igor Alcantara Welcome, recruit, to the new world of Agentic AI! This is probably the most discussed topic in AI as we begin our journey in 2025. In this article, I'm pulling back the curtain on a technological leap that’s redefined artificial intelligence and it has the potential of causing great impact in business around the globe. There is already a lot of buzz around this and, with that, a lot of confusion. This will be one of the hottest topics in 2025, so why no

Author: Igor Alcantara If you are following my work here at Data Voyagers and in my LinkedIn page , you probably already know how excited I am with Qlik Answers. Experimenting with this tool has been a mix of curiosity, creativity , and a little bit of chaos—but all with purpose. I can say, a controlled chaos, like the one you have at home on Thanksgiving day or any day if you're a parent. I’ve been testing the limits of what the tool can handle, finding clever ways to mak

Author: Igor Alcantara When I ask people what kind of knowledge you associate me with, I always get different responses. Those who do not know me well enough might say is Qlik or Data Science, Machine Learning, or maybe AI in general. The ones who know me better could mention Science or Podcast, maybe even Star Wars. However, the ones who really know me would definitely say: The Beatles. Yes, Mark Costa, I will find a way to reference the Beatles to this. The Beatles revoluti

As someone on the autistic spectrum, I've always felt a certain kinship with technology and artificial intelligence. There's something about the structured, logical nature of machines and algorithms that just clicks with the way my brain is wired. I know my initials (Alcantara, Igor) are AI, but that does not explain at all how I feel about this. I find myself wondering - is there a connection between the unique thought processes of those on the autism spectrum and our appare

It was late. The rain tapped against my window like a typewriter stuck on one letter, and I was deep in the trenches of another case. This one? A real doozy. I had to teach Qlik Answers how to crack open images and pull out their secrets—text buried beneath poor resolution, bad angles, you name it. I'd cracked cases before. Excel files ? Easy. CSV? Child’s play. Audio, video ? Done. Even got Qlik Answers talking in code , switching between Python and R like a seasoned double

Author: Igor Alcantara If you've been following my articles and videos here at Data Voyagers or catching up with my posts on LinkedIn , you know that lately I've been on a mission to test the boundaries of what we can achieve with Qlik Answers . Since my first impressions of Qlik Answers , I've been pushing its limits— teaching my Qlik AI Assistant to program in R and Python and even finding ways to use the Force (yes, that Force ) to turn the impossible into possible. Typic

Author: Igor Alcantara In the last couple of months, I have presented Qlik Answers a dozen times at events and for customers. One question I get asked every single time is: can we add Excel files to a Knowledge Base and create an Assistant to "talk" to the data? My answer is usually the following: "No. Qlik Answers is designed for unstructured data like PDF, DOC, HTML, and others. For your request, you need to use Insight Advisor." However, that "no, you can't" bothers me. Th

Author: Igor Alcantara Qlik Answers is a powerful tool within the Qlik Cloud platform, designed to harness the capabilities of AI by providing contextually relevant answers from unstructured data. Many great people are already providing incredible use cases for this tool. The way I decided I could contribute more was to run a few exercises and analyses, like the article I published on this blog about my first impressions of Qlik Answers and the many other posts I shared on m

Author: Igor Alcantara It's Friday, so let's have some fun and once again push the boundaries of AI. While waiting for a Qlik Answers knowledge base to index a few documents, I decided to test ChatGPT's ability to separate signal from noise and recognize patterns. I thought Waldo (or Wally in the UK, Brazil, and many other countries), the famous character from the puzzle book series created by British illustrator Martin Handford in 1987, would be a great challenge. I also wan

Good day, data voyagers! This is Igor Alcantara , back from vacation with one more article! When Qlik announced the acquisition of the LLM/GenAI company Kyndi a few months ago, I was eager to see how they would integrate it into the Qlik Platform. The 3rd most enjoyable part of my job as a data scientist is staying up-to-date with what’s available in the market and the new trends and innovations. So, I was already somewhat familiar with Kyndi, just as I was with BigSquid befo