AI Ushers In The Age Of Unknown Unknowns

Increasingly, the data that is relevant for companies' machine learning efforts will be not just some data, but all of it; anything less risks missing what could conceivably be the critical insight down the road, the answer to questions as yet Chief information officers of companies have a strange predicament in an age of AI: They are meant to solve problems for companies by marshaling the relevant data on customers and transactions, but the data itself is going to raise new, unexpected questions. Increasingly, the data that is relevant for companies' machine learning efforts will be not just some data, but all of it; anything less risks missing what could conceivably be the critical insight down the road, the answer to questions as yet unasked. Until recently, the era of "big data," as it's called, has been about providing only the requisite information to answer some straightforward question, where the "known unknowns" are all that matters. For example, if you're a retailer, you might want to know how many of your customers would be likely to return items they've bought based on patterns of purchases. In fact, a group from Indian online apparel retailer Myntra this summer showed off a machine learning model for just such an application.