Big Data

What is Big Data?

According to Margaret Rouse, from Search, Data, and Management, Big Data is a combination of structured, semistructured and unstructured data collected by organizations, big tech companies, such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon. The gathering of Big Data can help organizations create machine learning projects and predictive modelings of consumer behavior. 

Concerns about Big Data

Although this article was meant to be just about "what is big data?". I would like to focus it on the concerns Joseph E. Stiglitz discusses in his book "People, Power, and Profits, Progressive Capitalism in an Age of Discontent", where, in a very short summary, he talks about the American economy and how the financial system is affecting society led by politicians who care more about money and follow their own personal interests instead of the society's.

In this book, the author writes a chapter aimed at emerging technologies, big data and AI and how they will affect the economy. 

One of his concerns is that as these big tech companies, mentioned in the first paragraph, already represent a monopoly and a dominant position in the tech industry and as they gathered more information about us, the users, they can exert more power over us. For example, the manipulation of the information we see, creating doubts over certain ideas and different opinions among people, as the Cambridge Analytica case in the 2016 EE.UU elections. 

Even though this information means that they can create tailor-made products based on the information analyzed, it will lead to higher market power under their hands, with huge consequences, creating even bigger financial and social inequality among citizens. 

Besides, monopolies are not incentivized to innovate, what they look to, is increased in profits and power. 

The author proposed some solutions among the user's privacy, as making personal information of our own property, but as we see in Europe with GDPR, there's a lot of flaws and this subject requires more attention and adjustments. 

References

Stiglitz, J. (2019) People, Power, and Profits, Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent. Dublin: Penguin Books. 

Rouse, M. "Big Data". Available at: https://searchdatamanagement.techtarget.com/definition/big-data  (Accessed 28 Jan 2020).