1.4 Big Data Gold Rush for the Twenty-First Century’s Oil
5
also accelerate the research and development of new drugs and focus resources on
the areas of greatest need.
It is clear, therefore, that the potential applications of Big Data are various and
rapidly spreading. While it will enable personalized services and products, optimized
production and distribution processes, as well as “smart cities”, it will reveal also
unexpected links between our activities. But beyond this, where are we heading?
1.5 Will Artificial Intelligence Overtake Us?
Today, an average mobile phone is more powerful than the computers used to send the
Apollo rocket to the moon and even the Cray-2 supercomputer thirty years ago, which
weighted several tons and had the size of a building. This amazing progress is a result
of “Moore’s law”, which posits that computer processing power increases exponentially. But thanks to powerful “machine learning” methods, information systems are
becoming more intelligent, too. They do calculations faster than us, they play chess
better than us, they remember information longer than us, and they perform more
and more tasks that only humans could do in the past. Will they soon be smarter than
us? Are the days counted when humans were the “crown of creation”? The famous
futurist Ray Kurzweil (*1948), now a director of engineering at Google, was the first
to claim that this critical moment (the so-called “singularity”) is near.
3
A few years ago, when I read that Artificial Intelligence (AI) might pose a serious
threat to humanity, I found this hard to imagine, even ridiculous. However, experts
now predict that computers will be able to perform most tasks better than humans in
5–10 years, and reach brain-like functionality within 10–25 years. The AI systems
of today are no longer expert systems programmed by computer scientists—they are
learning and evolving. To understand the implications, I recommend you to watch
some eye-opening videos on deep learning and artificial intelligence.
4 These videos
demonstrate that most of the activities we earn our money with today (such as reading
and listening to language, distinguishing different patterns, and performing routines)
can now be done by computers almost as well as by humans, if not better. Jim
Spohrer’s perspective on IBM’s cognitive computing products is as follows:
5 The
first Artificial Intelligence applications will be our tools. As they get smarter, they
will become our “partners”, and when they overtake us, they will be our “coaches”.
Will algorithms, computers, or robots be our bosses in a few decades from now?
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has started to study such scenarios.
6
It is extremely important therefore to realize that the digital revolution is not just
3 Kurzweil [1, 2].
4 For example, you may watch this TEDx video of Jeremy Howard to get an idea of what machine
learning is currently capable of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xx310zM3tLs.
5 See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7PVBGtEYyg.
6 MIT Study Shows People Would Rather Take Orders From A Robot Than Their Boss, http://www.
businessinsider.com/robots-as-bosses-2014-8?IR=T.
5
also accelerate the research and development of new drugs and focus resources on
the areas of greatest need.
It is clear, therefore, that the potential applications of Big Data are various and
rapidly spreading. While it will enable personalized services and products, optimized
production and distribution processes, as well as “smart cities”, it will reveal also
unexpected links between our activities. But beyond this, where are we heading?
1.5 Will Artificial Intelligence Overtake Us?
Today, an average mobile phone is more powerful than the computers used to send the
Apollo rocket to the moon and even the Cray-2 supercomputer thirty years ago, which
weighted several tons and had the size of a building. This amazing progress is a result
of “Moore’s law”, which posits that computer processing power increases exponentially. But thanks to powerful “machine learning” methods, information systems are
becoming more intelligent, too. They do calculations faster than us, they play chess
better than us, they remember information longer than us, and they perform more
and more tasks that only humans could do in the past. Will they soon be smarter than
us? Are the days counted when humans were the “crown of creation”? The famous
futurist Ray Kurzweil (*1948), now a director of engineering at Google, was the first
to claim that this critical moment (the so-called “singularity”) is near.
3
A few years ago, when I read that Artificial Intelligence (AI) might pose a serious
threat to humanity, I found this hard to imagine, even ridiculous. However, experts
now predict that computers will be able to perform most tasks better than humans in
5–10 years, and reach brain-like functionality within 10–25 years. The AI systems
of today are no longer expert systems programmed by computer scientists—they are
learning and evolving. To understand the implications, I recommend you to watch
some eye-opening videos on deep learning and artificial intelligence.
4 These videos
demonstrate that most of the activities we earn our money with today (such as reading
and listening to language, distinguishing different patterns, and performing routines)
can now be done by computers almost as well as by humans, if not better. Jim
Spohrer’s perspective on IBM’s cognitive computing products is as follows:
5 The
first Artificial Intelligence applications will be our tools. As they get smarter, they
will become our “partners”, and when they overtake us, they will be our “coaches”.
Will algorithms, computers, or robots be our bosses in a few decades from now?
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has started to study such scenarios.
6
It is extremely important therefore to realize that the digital revolution is not just
3 Kurzweil [1, 2].
4 For example, you may watch this TEDx video of Jeremy Howard to get an idea of what machine
learning is currently capable of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xx310zM3tLs.
5 See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7PVBGtEYyg.
6 MIT Study Shows People Would Rather Take Orders From A Robot Than Their Boss, http://www.
businessinsider.com/robots-as-bosses-2014-8?IR=T.