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Big Data

Researchers: Big data shows math laws that underlie life’s unity

From the release: “The work, led by Ian Hatton at ICTA-UAB in Barcelona, shows how metabolism, abundance, growth and mortality all follow strikingly consistent relationships with body size from the tiniest bacteria to the blue whale.” Read More ›

Can Big Data beat the humans who compile it? A computer pioneer bet No

Fred Brooks says that human intelligence augmented by artificial intelligence will always beat artificial intelligence alone. Is he right? Jed Macosko, an assistant prof at Wake Forest University, explains: Before we envision scary scenes from The Matrix, we need to remember that Zor, Deep Blue, and any future AI systems are inevitably designed by humans. Developing an algorithm to beat humans or humans-plus-computers in chess requires a lot of other humans doing careful engineering. Not only that but their program designed to play chess won’t suddenly become a champion at Monopoly—or even very good at checkers. The bottom line is that Brooks’ Bet and his IA>AI inequality principle is a good reality check in the face of fears and hype Read More ›

Proven: If you torture a Big Data enough, it will confess to anything

In his fascinating new book The AI Delusion, economics professor Gary Smith reminds us that computers don’t have common sense. He also notes that, as data gets larger and larger, nonsensical coincidences become more probable, not less. Read More ›