Page 34 - STRATEGY Magazine

energy companies are now relying on AI programs to sift through massive quantities of geoscience data to locate the most profitable extraction sites and avoid the financial conse- quences of drilling at a dry site.
THE END OF HUMANITY AS WE KNOW IT?
Despite the myriad of advantages that could spring from a seamless unification of AI and big data, there are those who worry about the rapid advances in machine learning and how that might affect AI programs in the future. Inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil predicts that “artificial intelligence will reach human levels around 2029,” while Shane Legg,
the cofounder of British AI firm DeepMind, is on record as saying, “I think human extinction will probably occur, and technology will likely play a part in this.”
To be sure, the possibilities for misuse of these technolo- gies are endless. Companies or governments may attempt to exploit the data they obtain by engaging in “persuasive com- puting” to shape the flow of information to boost profits or achieve political goals. For example, a Chinese search engine is teaming up with the military to analyze online user data, with the end goal of assigning a so-called “Citizen Score” to
every person, which would impact the jobs they can get, the loans they may qualify for, or the travel visas they can obtain.
To combat these potential calamitous outcomes, Scientific American has proposed a set of fundamental digital princi- ples. Some of them focus on the information itself, including decentralization of information systems, reducing informa- tion pollution or distortion, and putting information filters in the hands of users. These precepts also call for improved transparency and interoperability, an emphasis on collec- tive intelligence, and the promotion of responsible digital behavior of entities who rely on artificial intelligence and/or big data.
The major players in artificial intelligence are also starting to recognize the undesirable potential of unbridled AI devel- opment. In September of 2016, the largest tech firms in the United States founded the Partnership on Artificial Intelli- gence, a group designed to tackle AI-related issues with the goal of avoiding dire consequences. Even so, these companies and others will not be hindering the merger of big data and AI anytime soon because of a few ominous warnings. Indeed, Mark Zuckerberg urged attendees at a 2016 conference to “choose hope over fear.”
32 STRATEGY
A seminal report from Dell on big data and AI found that organizations that actively use data grow 50 percent faster than those ignoring the trend. However, from 2014 to 2015, the num- ber of companies that grasp the advantages of big data only grew a miniscule 3 percent.
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