Big Business and You
Artificial intelligence has its hands in ever corner of the world of big business. But where we most see AI put to use is in big data.
Large corporations have a habit of collecting data from their customers. This data ranges from the impersonal (type of phone or computer you are using, country of origin, time spent on website) to the highly personal (phone number, address, web browsing history, social security number). In fact, there are over 2.5 quintillion bytes of data produced daily—the equivalent of 212,765,957 DVDs per day.
Big business has the money and capacity to harness this data to make better-informed business decisions. But they can’t do it all by hand. That’s where AI comes in.
Using artificial intelligence tools, corporations are able to identify trends and preferences, to analyze client behaviors, to gain invaluable insights into who their clients are and what they are likely to do next. Simply put, your data makes you easier to influence. It teaches corporations how to more accurately market to you. It knows your opinion perhaps even before you do.
With AI, data mining (the process of finding patterns in large sets of data) becomes faster, simpler, and cheaper. Your information has never been easier to access and understand. And as a result, questions of ethics arise. Is your information public or private? Should companies be allowed to buy and sell your data? Should you get a say?