4# Michael Helbling (Search Discovery, Stacked Analytics, The Analytics Power Hour) on 20 Years in the Trenches, Why Trust Is the Real Bottleneck, and The Difference Between Data Retrieval and Actual Analysis

A very special episode of Knowledge Distillation with Michael Helbling, co-founder and co-host of the Analytics Power Hour podcast and founder of Stacked Analytics. Michael has spent two decades building analytics programs as both consultant and practitioner, and he’s not one to sugarcoat anything. Together we break down why dropping an LLM on your data warehouse won’t magically produce insights, why semantic ambiguity kills most AI analytics initiatives, and what the streetlight effect means for AI’s ability to conduct real analysis. We get into the path forward – multi-agent architectures, semantic layers, knowledge graphs – while staying clear-eyed about the heavy lift required. Essential listening for anyone caught between CEO mandates to “AI everything” and the reality that this stuff doesn’t work like the LinkedIn posts suggest. All episodes on our website: www.ask-y.ai/knowledge-distillation-podcast Learn more about ASK-Y: www.ask-y.ai