Data integration remains essential for AI and machine learning

The nature of human consciousness has so far evaded all, from philosophers to neuroscientists. It should therefore be of no surprise that the artificial intelligence (AI) that we can currently build is limited to more basic pattern recognition within sets of data. Although AI and machine learning (ML) algorithms are getting ever better at doing more with less, we still often need to bring together data from multiple sources for them to produce results that make sense. Humans require a lot of information to make sense of the world, so our current more primitive computer algorithms surely need far more. I am of the opinion that there are two essential technologies that will play a huge role in the future of ML, but are currently relatively under-explored – metacognition and causal inference.