Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

TagBig Data

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2019 AI Hype Countdown #9: Hype Fought the Law and…

Autonomy had real software but the hype around Big Data had discouraged Hewlett Packard from taking a closer look

Autonomy CFO Sushovan Hussain was sentenced this year to a five year prison term and a ten million dollar fine because he was held “ultimately responsible for Autonomy's revenues having been overinflated by $193m between 2009 and the first half of fiscal 2011.”

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Can a Big Data Program Be Society’s Crystal Ball?

Can a program with enough data on all of us predict our future?

Even fans admit that, if the program works, bad actors can use it just as easily as New Scientist’s virtuecrats.

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The Golden Age of the Web?—A Dissent

What happened to the collaborative culture, decentralized markets, and wisdom of crowds that bestsellers prophesied fifteen years ago?

Remembering the prophecies for the web in the halcyon days of ten or (better) fifteen years ago is strangely painful and disorienting, like a hangover, largely because we so silently abandoned its ideals.

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Bingecast: Business Intelligence and AI Accounting

Robert J. Marks and Jeremiah Marks talk about business intelligence and AI accounting. Business intelligence affects you daily from advertising and solicitation to how much you pay for tickets to watch the Dallas cowboys. How do companies use business intelligence? Technology has almost entirely replaced the travel agent and many brick and mortar stores. Could high tech tools like robots Read More ›

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The US 2016 Election: Why Big Data Failed

Economics professor Gary Smith sheds light on the surprise result

Some of the stuff that made a difference, they couldn’t put in a computer. Some people say, if you can’t measure it, it doesn’t count but sometimes the things that count can’t be measured.

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Big Data Can Lie: Simpson’s Paradox

Simpson’s Paradox illustrates the importance of human interpretation of the results of data mining

Simpson’s Paradox illustrates the need for seasoned human experts in the loop to examine and query the results from Big Data. Could AI be written to perform this operation? Those who say yes are appealing to an algorithm-of-the-gaps.

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Your Phone Knows Everything Now

And in a world where no data is anonymous, yours may be sold to the highest bidder
Your location can be a useful guide to your buying habits, whether or not you want to buy anything or think anyone has any business snooping on you to find out. Read More ›
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camera record on crane in production on studio and light to stage for entertainment industry

1: IBM’s Watson Is NOT Our New Computer Overlord

AI help, not hype: It won at Jeopardy (with specially chosen “softball” questions) but is not the hoped-for aid to cancer specialists
One problem that has dogged Watson has nothing to do with AI or medicine. The journalism around the introduction of projects like Watson is long on the Gee Whiz! An Electronic Brain! It Won at Jeopardy! And it is short on systematic inquiry as to outcomes versus goals. Read More ›
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Chess game business strategy concept

Can Big Data Beat the Humans Who Compile It?

A computer pioneer bets no: Human intelligence augmented by artificial intelligence will always beat artificial intelligence alone. Is he right?
The bottom line is that Brooks’ Bet and his IA>AI inequality principle is a good reality check in the face of fears and hype about what AI will do in the future. Read More ›
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Study Shows Eating Raisins Causes Plantar Warts

Sure. Because, if you torture a Big Data enough, it will confess to anything
Enormous data sets compiled by Big Data methods have a higher probability of meaningless correlations than smaller ones compiled by traditional methods. More than ever, common sense is needed. And common sense only comes from programmers writing their own common sense into the software. Read More ›
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Can Big Data Help Make Your Book a Best Seller?

It’s more likely to help you picture your odds more clearly and clarify your goals
What does Barabási’s Big Data tell us that we couldn’t just guess? Well, for one thing, that there is a “universal sales curve” which means that a book’s only chance of making the list is shortly after publication. Read More ›
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Quantity vs Quality: Can AI Help Scientists Produce Better Papers?

What happens when scientists simply can't read all their peers' papers and still find time for original research?
Quantity is definitely a solved problem. STM, the “voice of scholarly publishing” estimated in 2015 that roughly 2.5 million science papers are published each year. Some are, admittedly, in predatory or fake journals. But over 2800 journals are assumed to be genuine. Read More ›
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What is Business Intelligence?

Discussing how Artificial Intelligence Has Changed the Opera with Jeremiah Marks

Business intelligence affects you daily; from advertising and solicitation to how much you pay for tickets to watch the Dallas Cowboys. Jeremiah Marks talks about what business intelligence is and how it changes the way we approach our customers. Show Notes 01:26 | Introducing Jeremiah Marks 02:00 | Opera Philadelphia 03:25 | Jeremiah Marks describes business intelligence 05:20 | Business intelligence packages 06:30 | Privacy, Read More ›

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Silicon Valley grew old before it grew up

By April of this year, 100 employees were complaining about the Google groupthink
Quip making the rounds: Would you trust a self-driving car from Google? Answer: Sure, if I needed a car that decided for me where I should go and then just drove me there. Read More ›
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Better medicine through machine learning?

Data can be a dump or a gold mine
The biggest problem today isn’t the sheer mass of data so much as the difficulty of determining what it is worth. The answer lies, unfortunately, in the undone studies and the unreported events. Machine learning will be a much greater help when those problems are addressed. Read More ›