SILICON VALLEY, CA. – Big Data and Artificial Intelligence, or AI, are rapidly changing the way we live, think, shop, act and view reality. Truly we are undergoing a paradigm shift of civilization-shaking proportions.
The last time the world changed this much was around the year 1500 A.D., when Columbus and Magellan explored the New World, gunpowder replaced the sword and the Guttenberg printing press spurred on the Reformation.
Despite all of the new information at our disposal amid the recent paradigm shift, the world seems less stable and more out of control. There are those who say the new era has arrived for the entire world, yet because so many on Earth do not have access to the internet or iPhones, the new way of being is "unevenly distributed." How far have we come in the digital age? Consider that AI researchers at Stanford University – after having examined millions of health records – can now predict with 80 percent accuracy when you will die. Deconstruct their findings here.
There are those who say it has never been a better time to live on planet Earth than today. Check out this article, which presents a very strong case in the affirmative. Extreme poverty is being eradicated around the world. China is bringing order to Africa. Environmental awareness is growing. More people have greater access to online information and communication every day. Project Loon at the Advanced Technologies and Projects Lab at Google-Alphabet seeks to bring the internet to billions of people who are currently off the grid.
TRENDING: St. Patrick's role on the 'external hard drive'
That said, fresh-water issues, nuclear weapons, nuclear waste, Fukushima, climate change, land mines, elephant ivory, blood diamonds, blood lithium, the eradication of many species, narcotics, corruption, violence and political instability are the order of the day for far too many. Truly, humanity stands at a crossroads. Are you safer than before? Or increasingly at risk? In terms of the individual, that depends on if you live in Somalia or Detroit, as opposed to Switzerland or Namibia.
Big Data, machine learning and AI have put an incredible amount of information into the hands of the average person. Intelligent Virtual Assistants, or "IVAs," will soon become the norm for those living in the developed world. Still, can all of the high technology and wizardry of the 21st century make the average person any happier, or safer for that matter? If not, what are the alternatives?
The Harvard Business Review published an article stating that self-awareness can help leaders more than an MBA. Read it here. Women's intuition has never been quantified, but people have pointed to it as a beckon of esoteric knowledge down through the millennia. Some people swear by astrology and study their daily horoscope online. Others believe in four-leaf clovers.
Breaking a mirror is said to carry with it seven years of bad luck. The same for walking under a ladder or opening up an umbrella indoors. Major League Baseball players are often seen making the sign of the cross before a plate appearance, and/or they avoid stepping on the foul lines. In colonial Salem, it is said the real power of witches rested only in the idea they had influence over others.
Postmodern priests and priestesses have no such concerns. They are too busy inventing the future. Check out this article on Wired.com about the "Hyperloop" currently being tested north of Las Vegas, Nevada. (Nevada means, "snow covered" in Spanish.) This heady idea could change transportation – as we currently know it – forever.
For those busy commuting, often caught up in horrendous traffic for two to three hours per day, the Hyperloop seems about as realistic as that original Star Trek TV series. Joel Ohman, the CEO of CarInsuranceComparison.com, offers insights on the costs of insuring yourself on the road. The idea of "random chance" as a part of statistical modeling finds its apex in regards to the world of car insurance. How many miles per year do you drive? The more you drive, the more likely you are to have an accident. It should be pointed out that driving 75 miles per hour instead of 55 miles per hour makes you twice as likely to die in a crash. This is sobering information indeed.
Here in Northern California, the traffic is out of control in so many ways. People often confess that their daily commute is the single most stressful element of their busy lives. Extreme commutes of two-to-three hours per day can often lead to weight gain, fatigue, fluctuating mood swings (including depression) and other physical and emotional ailments. Can technologies such as driverless cars save the day? Or will America's highways one day soon resemble the peak traffic of Seoul, South Korea, and Bangkok, Thailand?
There are those who believe that life is a casino, more or less. Some like to gamble and push things to the limit – financially, morally and socially. Many San Francisco Bay Area residents go to Reno, Nevada, to gamble. Others prefer online slots. Many millions prefer to play the lottery.
People take chances in regard to contracting AIDS. They climb Mount Everest. They sail alone to Hawaii. They gamble on the stock market, as if individual investors can complete with NASA-level PhDs and their micro-trading formulas. Where does this leave us – the average person just trying to get by and adjust to the new American way of life? Does character matter anymore? The answer is a resounding "yes!"
Fundamentally, we can still say that Brazil is different from New England because the Conquistadors sailed in one direction, and the Puritans sailed in another. Values determine outcomes. Yet with Big Data and AI continuing to inform our august decision-making, old-style "hunches" will become less and less common. Look at Major League Baseball, where most of the managerial decisions are pre-planned through analytics. The truth is that future MLB managers will be Big Data analysts and human-resources gurus more than Yogi Berra clones.
Another salient truth is that the average American teenager has more of a chance to be hit by a meteor than to play in the NBA. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't keep reaching for the stars.
We should not let the odds deter us from the realization of our dreams. Certainly, it can be argued that we have greater opportunities today than ever before in terms of education, travel, the arts, recreational sports, communication via social media over the internet, and many other aspects of postmodern life.
In bygone centuries, the best universities featured the finest libraries. Today, anyone can read any book from just about any library over the internet. Anyone can "take" MIT classes by simply logging onto YouTube.com. The odds are that the burning of the great library in Alexandria, Egypt, in ancient times could not be replicated in 2018.
Let us embrace new technologies, including Big Data, AI and machine learning, as the gateway to a better future for all mankind. Disciplines ranging from agriculture to medicine to construction will all be positively augmented by the rise of the machines. The odds are that the future can still be bright. In fact, it can be argued that the future is merely a set of mathematical probabilities based on the actions we undertake today.