With the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal capturing the attention of the world, how much information can be collected about us from our internet profiles and searches has come under the microscope. Many are beginning to realise the power of big data and are starting to feel threatened by the vast implications it holds. But technology itself is neither positive or negative- it’s the ends that humans turn it to that make the difference. The truth is that Machine Learning is nothing new - it’s all around us right now, and has been for a number of years. Despite the recent spate of bad press, it’s doing some positive things for our lives and helping us in many ways.
Making Your Shopping Experience Better
Whether you are looking for that perfect Friday night out ensemble or searching for the right gift, your shopping basket online is now an intelligent one. From the supermarket that knows you’d like to find deals on washing powder, to the latest recommendations for your Kindle, machine learning delivers ever more finer-tuned recommendations to your inbox. In analysing daya about what you have previously purchased, and even want shoppers similar to you have, it’s less likely that you’ll miss out on deals and products that are genuinely what you want - even if you don’t know you want it!
Keeping Your Money Safe
As the threat of fraud and identity theft increases, banks are using machine learning to understand more about your spending habits - in an effort to understand when it's not likely to be you spending hundreds on that block of cryptocurrency. Micro levels of activity, undetectable to human analysis, can be monitored and trigger security measures remotely. There are certain characteristics within spending patterns such as amount, locations and timings that can identify if it’s likely to be fraudulent and alert you as the account holder.
Verifying Your Social Media
Facebook is the most prominent example, as their image recognition technology is what suggests to you pictures where you’ve been tagged or names of others in your images. Analysing facial dimensions, it can track your likeness across the net. But far from just being a handy way to keep track of your holiday snaps, the technology allows you to ensure that your image is not being used by unauthorised persons on social media, such as to catfish on dating sites or to set up fake profiles.
Protecting Your Health
Artificial Intelligence is being used by health professionals to increase the speed and accuracy of diagnoses, spotting earlier signs of disease and degeneration. By analysing visual clues from a broad spectrum of photographs, machine learning can look for fine levels of detail that spell early warning signs, such as patterns of cells. By diagnosing conditions early, the impact is lessened and treatments are generally far more effective- so big data is literally saving lives.
So although the prospect of all this data being gathered on us has it's negative implications, there are also many definite positive effects already in process. In the future, as this data also has a cumulative effect, the benefits we can derive from it will also increase.
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