Protecting privacy in an AI-driven world

Our world is undergoing an information Big Bang, in which the universe of data doubles every two years and quintillions of bytes of data are generated every day.1 For decades, Moore's Law on the doubling of computing power every 18-24 months has driven the growth of information technology. Now–as billions of smartphones and other devices collect and transmit data over high-speed global networks, store data in ever-larger data centers, and analyze it using increasingly powerful and sophisticated software–Metcalfe's Law comes into play. It treats the value of networks as a function of the square of the number of nodes, meaning that network effects exponentially compound this historical growth in information. As 5G networks and eventually quantum computing deploy, this data explosion will grow even faster and bigger. The impact of big data is commonly described in terms of three "Vs": volume, variety, and velocity.2