The Perils of Data Analytics

By: Michael Ferrari, Senior Fellow at Wharton Customer Analytics, Chief Data Scientist at Engine No. 1

The definition of technology remains elusive, and has been prone to large shifts through the decades alongside modernization. A generally time-independent and agreed-upon definition states that technology is a means to utilize systems, machines, or devices to leverage scientific knowledge for practical human applications. By this definition, artificial intelligence is a technology, using computational means and systems to better understand and make sense of data. We can view AI as a technology that is used for transporting and converting data for human consumption in the same way that we use an automobile to transport us from one point to another, or a generator to convert energy into electricity.