Due to our society’s exponentially increasing dependence on technology, we have found ourselves in uncharted territory when it comes to the amount of data we create and utilize. The advent of new technologies and increased access to these technologies has resulted in rates of data creation unlike anything seen before. To put this in perspective, 90% of the data in our digital universe has been created in the past 2 years alone (Marr 2018). With this data revolution comes great opportunity and great risk, and at the forefront of both of these aspects is the development and implementation of artificial intelligence.
AI will drastically impact virtually every aspect of our society in the near future. We see the importance of AI in the field of transportation, as its technology is being used to spearhead the autonomous vehicle industry. From a manufacturing standpoint, AI powered robots are already beginning to work alongside humans. Looking at healthcare, AI technology will be able to assess and diagnose diseases more quickly than ever. We even see AI beginning to make an impact in media and customer service, as Bloomberg and Google harness AI to produce earning reports and create digital assistants respectively. AI certainly has the potential to benefit society unlike anything else we have seen since perhaps the harnessing of electricity, but that growth opportunity does not come risk-free.
The sheer amount of data needed for AI to operate to its full potential begs questions about our privacy. With this in mind, AI, while exciting is a double edged sword. In the not-too-distant future, we can likely expect our everyday lives to be completely altered due to AI, as robot assistants will become commonplace, manual cars become obsolete, and our computers continue to do more of the thinking for us than ever before. While our lives may become easier in these aspects, our awareness of the data we share must continue to improve, or we may find ourselves to be in more trouble than this is all truly worth.
How Much Data Do We Create Every Day? The Mind-Blowing Stats Everyone Should Read. (2019). Forbes.com. Retrieved 18 July 2019, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2018/05/21/how-much-data-do-we-create-every-day-the-mind-blowing-stats-everyone-should-read/#663650860ba9