The Conundrum of Machine Learning and Cognitive Biases

Machine learning is on the rise due to the technological convergence of the growth of big data, decreasing data storage costs, increasing computing power, improved artificial intelligence algorithms and acceleration of cloud computing. Machine learning is the ability for computers to learn without explicit programming. It's analogous to the human ability to identify an octopus based on the set of data input that goes to the brain, such as eight arms, tentacles, lack of skeleton and other characteristics, without having prior knowledge of every type of cephalopod mollusk in existence. However, human decision-making is subject to numerous cognitive biases that can easily distort judgement. For example, iconoclastic author Tom Peters highlights 159 cognitive biases that impact management decision-making (Peters, Tom.