Abstract: R users tend to be skeptical of modern AI models, given our weird insistence on answers being accurate, or at least supported by the data. But I believe the time has come—or maybe it’s a little late—for even the most AI-cynical among us to push past their discomfort and get informed about what these tools are truly capable of. And key to that is moving beyond using AI-enabled apps, and towards building our own scripts, packages, and apps that make judicious use of AI.
  In this talk, I’ll tell you why I believe AI has more to offer the R community than just wrong answers from chat windows or mediocre code suggestions in our IDEs. I’ll also introduce brand-new tools we’re developing at Posit that put powerful AI tools within reach of every R user. And finally, I’ll show how adding some AI could make your next Shiny app dramatically more useful for your users.
Speaker: Joe Cheng
Affiliation: Posit
Title: Summer is Coming: AI for R, Shiny, and Pharma
Abstract_Sanitzed: R users tend to be skeptical of modern AI models, given our weird insistence on answers being accurate, or at least supported by the data. But I believe the time has come—or maybe it’s a little late—for even the most AI-cynical among us to push past their discomfort and get informed about what these tools are truly capable of. And key to that is moving beyond using AI-enabled apps, and towards building our own scripts, packages, and apps that make judicious use of AI. In this talk, I’ll tell you why I believe AI has more to offer the R community than just wrong answers from chat windows or mediocre code suggestions in our IDEs. I’ll also introduce brand-new tools we’re developing at Posit that put powerful AI tools within reach of every R user. And finally, I’ll show how adding some AI could make your next Shiny app dramatically more useful for your users.