Just Because AI Can Doesn’t Mean It Should | Ben Schein, Domo

David Sweenor 0:07 Hello, and welcome to the Data Faces podcast on location. We are coming to you live from the Devil’s Thumb Ranch in Colorado. We are at the BARC Data and Analytics Retreat 2026. I’m David Sweenor, your host for TinyTechGuides. I’m joined by Ben Schein. He’s the Chief AI and Analytics Officer at Domo. Ben, welcome to the show. So can you tell us a little bit about your role as Chief AI and Analytics Officer?

Ben Schein 0:32 Yeah, so my role, I focus a lot on how we use AI internally at Domo to become more efficient, to drive our data culture and how we service our customers. But obviously that also connects back into how we’re empowering all of our customers to use AI. And so we talk about Domo as being the agentic platform for the intelligent enterprise. And what that really means is that we’re helping people as we have for well over a decade now, establish a data foundation, whether that’s using Snowflake or BigQuery or Databricks, using our connectors, using transformation, activate that data through agents, apps, workflows, and then distribute that data out to people to use, whether that’s as an app, in the app store, via embedded analytics and other methods. And all of that on top of really governance and that observability you need to make AI work for you in a meaningful way these days.

David Sweenor 1:24 Well, that’s amazing. And part of the show, you know, it’s called Data Faces. And I should have opened with this, but I didn’t. So we’ll fix this in editing. But anyways, I like to get behind the stories before your LinkedIn profile existed.

Ben Schein 1:34 Yeah.

David Sweenor 1:35 So what did you want to be when you grew up?

Ben Schein 1:38 What did I want to be when I grow up? When I was little, I was really obsessed with airports. So I love the maps of airports and the design of airports. So maybe I really wanted to be someone who designed airports. Now I’m someone who gets to go to lots of airports. So maybe that hurts. But I was just fascinated. How are they designed? What’s the consistency? Why does this one have the trains and the other one? And even when I was a little kid, that was one of my fascinations my mom would probably confirm for you.

David Sweenor 2:02 Okay. Well, that’s amazing. And we can’t ask for a better location here in Colorado. The conference has been amazing. What’s your initial observations and what’s your thoughts about it?

Ben Schein 2:12 Yeah, and it’s been great. I mean, with so much changing so quickly, it’s great to hear from experts, hear from, you know, peers, competitors even, about how they’re thinking about this space. I think some of the conversations around sovereignty, I think I had this aha of, like, sovereignty, we often talk about where is the data center. Right. But sovereignty is really about, like, how do I have control and visibility in my data and what it’s doing? Sure. And that really is the crux of the world we’re entering now with AI, with Gen AI, with agents. And so I really, I think, I leave here with a different form, a different view of that word sovereignty than maybe when I came in thinking, oh, that’s just about where our data centers are and if we have to open a new one.

David Sweenor 2:47 Yeah, yeah, and I think there’s sort of, you know, we’ve talked a lot about sovereignty, we’ve talked about unstructured data, we’ve talked about FP&A and innovation, all these themes. Cost is a big thing. Cost is a big thing.

Ben Schein 2:59 Are these kind of the relevant themes you’re hearing from your customers as well? Yeah, I think it’s a big thing. I’ve been working through some thought leadership in a conference we’re going to in a couple weeks of sort of talking about how just because AI can doesn’t mean AI should. Right. Right, and that goes across governance, that goes across the cost conversation of token optimization, that goes across this idea of, like, when do I want a probabilistic? conversation and brainstorming versus the deterministic outcome that’s going to happen the same every time. And so I think those are things that we’re challenged with every day. And even while I’m here getting emails from customers freaking out that someone’s using Claude to take Domo data and do something cool, and I’m like, Well, I expect that’s going to keep on happening. That’s kind of what you want to do, right? With MCP and governance, I want us to be that, again, like the agentic platform for the intelligence enterprise does not mean everything has to happen in Domo, right?

David Sweenor 3:48 Yeah, and there’s the content of this event as well as just the networking. I’ve never been to an event like this where it’s very intimate. You get to know each and every individual at this as not only a professional, But as a person, yes.

Ben Schein 4:03 It is very nice. And look, I think it is nice that, again, some of these people we’re competing with on deals and for customers and all of that. And so it’s nice. We were talking this morning at breakfast. A lot of us are going to have booths at the Snowflake Summit next week. So in those contexts, we’re sort of fighting against each other. But it’s nice to come together and learn a little in a way that’s not giving away any secrets. These are all… No one else. Everyone’s going to say yes. How much the cost of cloud and tokens and all that is in the headlines every single day. So we’re all thinking about it. So it’s nice to get some of that perspective and the personal.

David Sweenor 4:33 It’s good. It’s good to be in a good company in that like no one’s quite figured this out yet. So we’re all learning together. Yes. Well, great. So where can people find you and Domo if they have questions or want to know a little more information?

Ben Schein 4:47 Yeah, so you should go to domo.com or domo.com slash AI has a lot of information about our agents and some of the work we’re doing in AI. I’m pretty active on LinkedIn, posting sometimes serious things, sometimes less serious things, but happy to connect there or see what we’re sharing and all that. We had a big feature release this week, so posted a, we call them the Domo Drop videos about, not even an AI feature, just a boring old visualization, but sometimes you need those too, but I’m definitely always willing to connect and chat with people about this journey.

David Sweenor 5:15 Great. Well, Ben Schein, Chief AI and Analytics Officer at Domo, thanks for joining the Data Faces podcast.

Ben Schein 5:20 Thanks so much. Cheers.