As data scientists increasingly become critical resources in enabling companies’ exploration and exploitation of their digital resources, it’s also increasingly important that data scientists can provide accurate and focused business guidance. If that seems like a mouthful, try these two scenarios.
Scenario 1: Joe is asked to recommend a portfolio of AI/ML projects that will improve performance, provide measurable ROI, and have relatively low risk of failure.
Scenario 2: Joan is asked to plan AI/ML projects that will maximize the value of the company, protect against competitors, and create the fastest possible market, revenue, and margin growth.
Pretty much any of us could do a competent job with the first scenario. We’d look at the current business and try to find opportunities where traditional ML could be used like scoring, forecasting, or optimization. If we’re sufficiently advanced we’d also look for AI opportunities like the application of NLP or image processing. Since we weren’t asked to challenge the fundamental business model, we just looked to places where we could paste on AI/ML. Read More
Daily Archives: April 11, 2019
Hype And Reality In Chinese Artificial Intelligence
In MIT Technology Review, Jeff Ding shares five takeaways from his experience writing about and translating Chinese-language writing about artificial intelligence (AI) research in China. Ding is a researcher at the University of Oxford who has now published 48 issues of his insightful ChinAI newsletter. From the MIT Tech Review article:
“The Chinese- and English-speaking AI communities have an asymmetrical understanding of each other. Most Chinese researchers can read English, and nearly all major research developments in the Western world are immediately translated into Chinese, but the reverse is not true…
Westerners have a hyped-up view of China’s AI capabilities… A few deep dives from Chinese writers have reported that most of China’s AI giants are much less impressive than they seem, with less-sophisticated algorithms and smaller research teams than commonly believed
.The Chinese government sees AI as a tool for social governance. Security companies account for the highest share of the top 100 AI companies… Some of these firms have been directly involved in the government’s mass surveillance of Xinjiang, the autonomous region where members of China’s ethnic minority group, the Uighurs, are concentrated. Other companies are fueling China’s export of surveillance tech to Central Asia and beyond
.AI research has benefited greatly from China-US collaboration. Historically, talent and ideas have flown freely between American and Chinese companies, challenging notions of what it means to be an American or Chinese. Take, for example, Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA), Microsoft’s hub in Beijing and the largest center outside its headquarters. In its 20-year history, MSRA has played as essential a role in pushing the boundaries of Microsoft’s research efforts as it has in fostering China’s AI ecosystem…
Chinese people care about AI ethics. While it may be true that Chinese and American citizens have differing views on privacy, it’s false to say that the former don’t care about it at all.” Read More
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