Are You Smarter Than An Algorithm?

Lately there has been lots of talk about artificial intelligence, about the implanting of microprocessors in humans and the essential human/machine interface. While not the stuff of science fiction, we are not quite there yet.

However where we are, is at point that we humans can begin learning from how machines think. More specifically, the programs or algorithms we use.

In the process, we ourselves can make better, faster and more efficient choices. Or so we hope. That’s the idea of Ali Almossawi, a data visualizer at Apple and the author of Bad Choices: How Algorithms Can Help You Think Smarter and Live Happier.

My conversation with Ali Almossawi:

We know more and understand less than every before

T.S. Eliot wrote, in 1934. “Where is the life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” He might have written those words yesterday.

Certainly we’ve never had more knowledge, more information and seemingly less wisdom than we do today. What is the connection? How is it, that the more we know, the less we seem to understand and the less we seem to able to clearly and logically process it?

Does the fault lie in the technology, the speed at which information comes at us, or an evolutionary limitation to process information that has not yet caught up with technology? Or is it simply fear of the new, and fear of the future.

This is what Michael Patrick Lynch addresses in The Internet of Us: Knowing More and Understanding Less in the Age of Big Data