Ian Ruffle, head of data and insight at the RAC, says the key to exploiting data assets is twofold – understanding the business problem and having a great team that’s capable of finding the right technological solutions.
“I need people who are empowered, keen, enthusiastic and willing to share knowledge,” he says, outlining the importance of talent to the effective deployment of data-hungry systems and services in the digital age. Rather than finding a suitable challenge for a technology that’s already been procured, Ruffle wants his team to engage with their functional peers.
“As a data leader in business, success is all about people coming to us and saying, ‘We’ve got a problem. Can you find the solution?’” he says.
“I can then go to my team and say, ‘Has anyone got a solution?’ It’s their job to be aware of the capabilities. So, it’s a problem-led approach, but you need to make sure you’ve got the answers up your sleeve, which, for me, is all about the people.”
It’s an approach to technology implementation that Ruffle has refined during his career. He’s been with the motoring services provider since February 2013. Having cut his teeth in a range of marketing roles, he joined the organisation as customer relationship management (CRM) capability manager. In this role, he managed the company’s core marketing technology, working closely with the campaign team and the firm’s analysts.
As Ruffle proved his capabilities, he took on elevated roles, becoming head of marketing technology before assuming his current role as head of data and insight, where he reports to the RAC’s marketing chief, Alex Heath. Ruffle says it is a fast-paced role, and the speed of change suits him well.
“People say you get the absolute most out of me when time is tight,” he says. “Working at the RAC isn’t for everyone, because it’s fast-paced. We move very quickly. We make decisions quickly. It’s all about failing fast to be able to move on and make changes. The aim is to come up with a proof of concept and embed it.”
Working at the RAC is fast-paced. We move very quickly. We make decisions quickly. It’s all about failing fast to be able to move on and make changes. The aim is to come up with a proof of concept and embed it Ian Ruffle, RAC
Ruffle says his team’s ability to deliver data projects has transformed over the past five years. “We’re looking at using data and insight to drive and change the organisation,” he says. “And that focus, alongside my more senior roles, is exciting. I’m rubbing shoulders with some incredibly talented people.”
Transforming front-end systems
While Ruffle has always ensured his technical capabilities are up to date, he recognises that the pace of digital and data innovation has quickened over the past few years.
It’s a tough challenge for any individual to keep abreast of all the changes in the IT industry, let alone someone who’s spent a big proportion of their working life in marketing. Ruffle’s answer is to lean on trusted lieutenants in his team.
“It’s important to get the right people around you,” he says. “As a modern data leader, you need to be encouraging people to be learning and growing and empowering them to do a great job. I can’t do everything across a broad breadth of disciplines.”
Ruffle says being a great boss and attracting the right talent is the way forward. “You want staff to be motivated and encouraged to feel like they can drive the agenda,” he says.
“It’s important to get the right people around you. As a modern data leader, you need to be encouraging people to be learning and growing, and empowering them to do a great job. I can’t do everything across a broad breadth of disciplines”
Ian Ruffle, RAC
“I love working with my people. If you’ve got an idea, you can sow the seed in someone, and then they come back and play their theory back, and you can say, ‘Yeah, we’ll do that’.”
One of the team’s priority projects is a transformation of the RAC’s front-end marketing technology. The company uses a legacy system with a relational data model.
“It’s very batch-based,” he says. “There are some real-time use cases associated with the system, but it’s become prohibitive from a cost perspective to do everything that we need to do.”
Ruffle says the transformation process involves moving to a new supplier called Bloomreach. This agentic personalisation technology will sit on top of the RAC’s existing Snowflake AI Data Cloud platform. His organisation will be working with technology specialist Caci to deploy the Bloomreach technology over the next nine months. The result of this work should be a modern system that offers real-time and AI capabilities.
“That is quite a major project for us,” says Ruffle. “We’re consolidating four different suppliers in total, and probably six pieces of technology across those suppliers, into one central solution. The back end will be Snowflake, and Bloomreach will be dealing with a lot of the front-end stuff, which should mean the seamless integration of data is so much easier.”
Creating great experiences
Another important area of work is boosting operational efficiency. Many of these efforts are focused on two of the biggest cost areas of the business – the call centre and traffic patrols.
A large proportion of the organisation’s enterprise information is now held in Snowflake, using a robust data model. Ruffle says in-house developed application programming interfaces (APIs) stream data on real-time use cases back to the platform and the people in the call centre.
“It’s about the ability to know someone’s broken down at the roadside and to send them a real-time communication, with more accurate updates than we were ever capable of before. We’ve revolutionised the whole dispatch process on the other side of the call centre,” he says.
“We’ve built a single screen for users, powered by the data in Snowflake and via various web services to make the call centre experience seamless, rather than having three or four different operational systems.”
Ruffle says the joined-up approach makes it much easier for operational staff dealing with customers to answer important questions, such as whether an individual at the roadside has RAC cover. Before bringing data together, staff had to log in to different systems to confirm a customer was covered. Now, staff benefit from the single-screen approach.
We’ve got a platform powered by modern technology. The focus on technology and data driving change in the call centre and at roadside operations has been immense, and it’s been the backbone to the last few years of evolution at the RAC Ian Ruffle, RAC
“We’ve got a platform powered by modern technology,” he says. “So the focus on technology and data driving change in the call centre and at roadside operations has been immense, and it’s been the backbone to the last few years of evolution at the RAC.”
Managing complex scenarios
After evaluating potential solutions, the organisation deployed its first Snowflake platform for the marketing department in early 2020.
Ruffle says the AI Data Cloud’s scalability and its integration with the company’s existing Microsoft Azure architecture were important success factors. Since 2020, the RAC has expanded its use of the Snowflake platform beyond the marketing department.
Now, in addition to providing a single source of truth for the business, the company uses the Snowflake Marketplace, which is an online platform where users can access third-party data to augment their own insights. Ruffle explains how his organisation uses this data to enrich its own insights and decision-making processes.
“There’s a whole bunch of events data that we get, which includes things as simple as bank holidays, but also includes things like Glastonbury and other events where you might see gatherings of people in specific areas,” he says.
“Having easy access to information that’s comprehensive and maintained is great, because trying to gather that data manually is almost impossible, and to get the level of detail around the scale of the event is transformational.”
The RAC has also developed its own unified insights platform. This pane-of-glass application, known as Mavis, uses Snowflake’s Cortex AI tool to summarise data insights. Agents working in the RAC’s operations hub can use Mavis to find important customer information, such as cover entitlements.
“We’ve got all the information in one place now, which is easy, so the application will help you find the customer and fully understand their entitlement, which is more complicated than you’d think. There are a lot of nuances to the cover that people are entitled to,” says Ruffle.
“It’s about being able to get that level of detail and having accurate information at your fingertips. When you get to the much more complex scenarios, we’re helping an agent to make decisions. Our agents can see the recommendations and make decisions. That type of recommendation wasn’t possible just a few years ago.”
Being an empathetic organisation
While AI is already impacting customer service, Ruffle says breakdown specialists like the RAC must keep humans in the loop. People contact his organisation at moments of need, and technology should be an adjunct rather than a replacement for human assistance.
“People can be quite panicked, they can be unsure, and I don’t think we’d ever want to take away the humanity of dealing with people at that moment of need,” he says. “Technology plays a significant part in being operationally efficient, but we need to be really sensitive about our service being authentic and human.”
For example, customers stranded at the roadside will be looking for an estimated time of arrival (ETA) for the RAC patrol team. Ruffle says his team will continue using AI and data science to hone the accuracy of ETAs. However, great assistance is also about emotion and engagement, such as prioritising service for people who are pregnant or disabled.
“The digital evolution for us will be about leveraging technology. Data science and AI are improving, and, in the future, I think technology will be front and centre for us when making choices. However, it’s crucial that our agents can manage situations effectively and be a human face to the organisation,” he says.
“Our approach should be data-led in the background when making decisions. Automation is great, but there always needs to be an ability to manage the things you can’t predict and to manage scenarios where you really need to be an empathetic organisation.”
Thinking Machines cofounders Barret Zoph and Luke Metz are leaving the fledgling AI lab and rejoining OpenAI, the ChatGPT-maker announced on Thursday. OpenAI’s CEO of applications, Fidji Simo, shared the news in a memo to staff Thursday afternoon.
The news was first reported on X by technology reporter Kylie Robison, who wrote that Zoph was fired for “unethical conduct.”
A source close to Thinking Machines said that Zoph had shared confidential company information with competitors. WIRED was unable to verify this information with Zoph, who did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
Zoph told Thinking Machines CEO Mira Murati on Monday he was considering leaving, then was fired today, according to the memo from Simo. She goes on to write that OpenAI doesn’t share the same concerns about Zoph as Murati.
The personnel shake-up is a major win for OpenAI, which recently lost its VP of research, Jerry Tworek.
Another Thinking Machines Lab staffer, Sam Schoenholz, is also rejoining OpenAI, the source said.
Zoph and Metz left OpenAI in late 2024 to start Thinking Machines with Murati, who had been the ChatGPT-maker’s chief technology officer.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Since Donald Trump returned to the White House last January, the biggest names in tech have mostly fallen in line with the new regime, attending dinners with officials, heaping praise upon the administration, presenting the president with lavish gifts, and pleading for Trump’s permission to sell their products to China. It’s been mostly business as usual for Silicon Valley over the past year, even as the administration ignored a wide range of constitutional norms and attempted to slap arbitrary fees on everything from chip exports to worker visas for high-skilled immigrants employed by tech firms.
But after an ICE agent shot and killed an unarmed US citizen, Renee Nicole Good, in broad daylight in Minneapolis last week, a number of tech leaders have begun publicly speaking out about the Trump administration’s tactics. This includes prominent researchers at Google and Anthropic, who have denounced the killing as calloused and immoral. The most wealthy and powerful tech CEOs are still staying silent as ICE floods America’s streets, but now some researchers and engineers working for them have chosen to break rank.
More than 150 tech workers have so far signed a petition asking for their company CEOs to call the White House, demand that ICE leave US cities, and speak out publicly against the agency’s recent violence. Anne Diemer, a human resources consultant and former Stripe employee who organized the petition, says that workers at Meta, Google, Amazon, OpenAI, TikTok, Spotify, Salesforce, Linkedin, and Rippling are among those who have signed. The group plans to make the list public once they reach 200 signatories.
“I think so many tech folks have felt like they can’t speak up,” Diemer told WIRED. “I want tech leaders to call the country’s leaders and condemn ICE’s actions, but even if this helps people find their people and take a small part in fighting fascism, then that’s cool, too.”
Nikhil Thorat, an engineer at Anthropic, said in a lengthy post on X that Good’s killing had “stirred something” in him. “A mother was gunned down in the street by ICE, and the government doesn’t even have the decency to perform a scripted condolence,” he wrote. Thorat added that the moral foundation of modern society is “infected, and is festering,” and the country is living through a “cosplay” of Nazi Germany, a time when people also stayed silent out of fear.
Jonathan Frankle, chief AI scientist at Databricks, added a “+1” to Thorat’s post. Shrisha Radhakrishna, chief technology and chief product officer of real estate platform Opendoor, replied that what happened to Good is “not normal. It’s immoral. The speed at which the administration is moving to dehumanize a mother is terrifying.” Other users who identified themselves as employees at OpenAI and Anthropic also responded in support of Thorat.
Shortly after Good was shot, Jeff Dean, an early Google employee and University of Minnesota graduate who is now the chief scientist at Google DeepMind and Google Research, began re-sharing posts with his 400,000 X followers criticizing the Trump administration’s immigration tactics, including one outlining circumstances in which deadly force isn’t justified for police officers interacting with moving vehicles.
He then weighed in himself. “This is completely not okay, and we can’t become numb to repeated instances of illegal and unconstitutional action by government agencies,” Dean wrote in an X post on January 10. “The recent days have been horrific.” He linked to a video of a teenager—identified as a US citizen—being violently arrested at a Target in Richfield, Minnesota.
In response to US Vice President JD Vance’s assertion on X that Good was trying to run over the ICE agent with her vehicle, Aaron Levie, the CEO of the cloud storage company Box, replied, “Why is he shooting after he’s fully out of harm’s way (2nd and 3rd shot)? Why doesn’t he just move away from the vehicle instead of standing in front of it?” He added a screenshot of a Justice Department webpage outlining best practices for law enforcement officers interacting with suspects in moving vehicles.
How does procrastination arise? The reason you decide to postpone household chores and spend your time browsing social media could be explained by the workings of a brain circuit. Recent research has identified a neural connection responsible for delaying the start of activities associated with unpleasant experiences, even when these activities offer a clear reward.
The study, led by Ken-ichi Amemori, a neuroscientist at Kyoto University, aimed to analyze the brain mechanisms that reduce motivation to act when a task involves stress, punishment, or discomfort. To do this, the researchers designed an experiment with monkeys, a widely used model for understanding decisionmaking and motivation processes in the brain.
The scientists worked with two macaques that were trained to perform various decisionmaking tasks. In the first phase of the experiment, after a period of water restriction, the animals could activate one of two levers that released different amounts of liquid; one option offered a smaller reward and the other a larger one. This exercise allowed them to evaluate how the value of the reward influences the willingness to perform an action.
In a later stage, the experimental design incorporated an unpleasant element. The monkeys were given the choice of drinking a moderate amount of water without negative consequences or drinking a larger amount on the condition of receiving a direct blast of air in the face. Although the reward was greater in the second option, it involved an uncomfortable experience.
As the researchers anticipated, the macaques’ motivation to complete the task and access the water decreased considerably when the aversive stimulus was introduced. This behavior allowed them to identify a brain circuit that acts as a brake on motivation in the face of anticipated adverse situations. In particular, the connection between the ventral striatum and the ventral pallidum, two structures located in the basal ganglia of the brain, known for their role in regulating pleasure, motivation, and reward systems, was observed to be involved.
The neural analysis revealed that when the brain anticipates an unpleasant event or potential punishment, the ventral striatum is activated and sends an inhibitory signal to the ventral pallidum, which is normally responsible for driving the intention to perform an action. In other words, this communication reduces the impulse to act when the task is associated with a negative experience.
The Brain Connection Behind Procrastination
To investigate the specific role of this connection, as described in the study published in the journal Current Biology, researchers used a chemogenetic technique that, through the administration of a specialized drug, temporarily disrupted communication between the two brain regions. By doing so, the monkeys regained the motivation to initiate tasks, even in those tests that involved blowing air.
Notably, the inhibitory substance produced no change in trials where reward was not accompanied by punishment. This result suggests that the EV-PV circuit does not regulate motivation in a general way, but rather is specifically activated to suppress it when there is an expectation of discomfort. In this sense, apathy toward unpleasant tasks appears to develop gradually as communication between these two regions intensifies.
Beyond explaining why people tend to unconsciously resist starting household chores or uncomfortable obligations, the findings have relevant implications for understanding disorders such as depression or schizophrenia, in which patients often experience a significant loss of the drive to act.
However, Amemori emphasizes that this circuit serves an essential protective function. “Overworking is very dangerous. This circuit protects us from burnout,” he said in comments reported by Nature. Therefore, he cautions that any attempt to externally modify this neural mechanism must be approached with care, as further research is needed to avoid interfering with the brain’s natural protective processes.
This story originally appeared in WIRED en Español and has been translated from Spanish.
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