# Kafka's Role in AI Acceleration, and Open Formats at BNY | Ash Goel | Voices of the Kafka Community

[Voices of the Kafka Community](https://www.conduktor.io/voices-of-the-kafka-community)

Cutting Through the AI Hype

AG

Guest
Ash Goel
Data Engineering Lead, BNY

Host
[Ron Kapoor](https://www.conduktor.io/authors/ron-kapoor)
Technical Product Marketing, Conduktor

Ash Goel heads up a data engineering team at BNY. He spends a lot of time across the data ecosystem and its events, which gives him a grounded read on where the hype is regarding AI.

In this conversation

→Why he's a self-described "doomer" on the IBM acquisition of Confluent
→Whether Kafka is really the backbone of AI yet
→Why "we want to do AI" is a starting point, not a strategy
→Starting from the problem instead of the buzzword
→Convergence on open formats like Iceberg as the real enabler

"They say, we want to do AI. And I say, tell me what you want to do. Then we can see how to fix it."
Ash Goel, Data Engineering Lead at BNY

Interview highlight
"We want to do AI" is not a strategy
Every platform claims to be the place to do AI. Ash's response is to ask what you actually want to do first, and work back from there.

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