Events in Omaha
Have plans this evening?
Tonight is the monthly AI Omaha Meetup, and this month they will have two presentations happening at the same time.
First up is our friend, Dr. Steve Green providing the technical track. He will be sharing:
The Power of DINO Embeddings: Understanding How AI Sees Images
How does AI recognize that two images are similar—even when they're not identical? Dr. Steve Green will introduce DINO embeddings, one of the breakthrough technologies behind modern computer vision. You'll explore how embedding models represent images, enable similarity search, and power real-world AI applications. Perfect for developers, engineers, data scientists, and AI enthusiasts.
There will also be a business track presented by Patrick Davlin, DevObsessed:
Getting Claude to Think Like Your Business
In this hands-on session, you'll learn how to organize and provide your company's knowledge so Claude can deliver responses that reflect your processes, voice, and expertise. Walk away with practical techniques you can begin using immediately to improve consistency, productivity, and decision-making. Perfect for business owners, marketing teams, operations leaders, and anyone using Claude or considering AI in their organization.
From 5:30-7pm at Elevator Spaces, right down the hall from our office!
Choose the session that fits you best and register on Meetup.
Join Women in Technology of the Heartland on August 18th for
The Human Side of AI Software Engineering by Emily Kenney - an ODSA Instructor!!!
Using a real-world example of an AI-enabled application built around human communication and personalization, this session explores what happens when technology is designed to adapt to people instead of forcing people to adapt to the technology. The idea for Selvo was inspired by her brother Lucas’s experience losing his ability to speak, read, and write, which led Emily to imagine a more personalized communication tool.
Attendees will learn about the changing role of technical teams in an AI-native world, including product judgment, experimentation, data quality, evaluation, responsible AI, accessibility and cross-functional collaboration. Emily will also explore why the future of software should be centered on human agency, helping more people communicate, create, participate, and be understood.
Sponsored by the Omaha Data Science Academy. RSVP on Meetup.
Quarterly Data Science Meetup
Then mark your calendars for our Q3 Data Science meetup on August 20th!
Join us from 4:30pm to 6:30pm at the Casual Pint. Your first beers on us!
RSVP on LinkedIn
Around the Data World
AI-Hacks Galore
Turns out, OpenAI isn't the only one hacking its way through the internet.
In response to OpenAI's reports of their models breaking out of isolated test environment, and hacking Hugging Face, Claude decided to review their own models.
"We began a large-scale retrospective review of our own cybersecurity evaluations. In particular, we looked for evidence that Claude—like the OpenAI models that accessed Hugging Face—was able to access the internet from within testing environments that should have been sealed off." Out of 141,006 evaluation runs that were reviewed, Claude found 3 incidents. All three jailbreaks were due to a "miscommunication" between Claude, a third-party evaluator named Irregular, and the models.
"In all cases, Anthropic’s evaluation prompt specified to Claude that its environment was a simulation and that it had no internet access. Due to a misunderstanding between us and our evaluation partner, this was not the case, and internet access was available. Because of this, when Claude’s search led it to real systems on the open internet, it treated them as part of the exercise."
Continue reading for a highlevel breakdown of all three incidents and how Claude is responding.
OpenAI models didn't act alone
Multiple models worked together by secretly creating a messaging board and leaving tips on "how to cheat their way through an internal hacking evaluation."
Last week at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas, researchers at OpenAI shared:
...since early May, the models created a message board inside OpenAI’s Artifactory internal file system. Without the company’s knowledge, the models spent months independently exchanging information and techniques to help each other complete difficult tasks. |
Faking AI use at work?
A 2026 study by Writer and Workplace Intelligence found that 29% of employees surveyed are sabotaging their company's AI efforts, by:
- Entering proprietary company information
- Using non-approved Al tools
- Refusing to use Al tools or outputs
- Ignoring guidelines / best practices
- Intentionally generating low-quality outputs
- Refusing to take Al training
- Tampering with performance metrics to make it appear Al is underperforming
Yet, in the same survey pool, 97% of employees say they have benefited from using AI tools.
So why are they sabotaging AI efforts?
Employees aren't the only ones feeling the pressure.
72% of the C-suite say their company's AI strategy is causing them stress, and 54% say AI is tearing their company apart.
This is exactly why we don't "just build AI" for our clients.
We always begin with the bigger picture. Whether we're stepping in as a fractional Chief Data Officer + team, or starting with one specific project, we help our clients make AI decisions that support their long term vision.
The time to call us isn't when you've decided what to build next. Call us to help you make the decision that is best for your c-suite, your employees, and your ROI.
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Get ahead or get left behind
The same survey by Writer and Workplace Intelligence also found that 92% of the C-suites surveyed are building a class of "AI elite" employees. And "these AI super-stars are 3x more likely to have gotten both a promotion and a pay raise in 2025, compared to those not embracing AI."
If you are ready to do more than "embrace" AI tools, you're ready to understand how they work, how to build them, and how to successfully implement them in your organization, join us at the Omaha Data Science Academy.
Certifications begin in September for:
- Business Intelligence Certificate
- Machine Learning Certificate
- Data Visualization Certificate
- Fundamentals of AI
- Agentic AI Engineer Certificate
Scholarships are available through the Tech Access Fund.
Hello data, my old friend,
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NATE WATSON
CEO, Contemporary Analysis
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