By Aditya Malik, Founder, ValueMatrix.ai What oil was in the 18th century, data is in the 21st century – immensely valuable and influential. With the run towards AI supremacy, businesses and organizations possessing qualified and unbiased data win. However, the data openly available is marred with conscious and subconscious bias, largely due to woke or un-woke nature of humans. We don't know what we don't know – right or wrong is only temporary, as in always waiting to be judged with time.

"When it comes to the economy, data is the new oil," said entrepreneur Clive Humby in 2006. History has proven him right beyond all expectations. Empires have been built on bigger and bigger mountains of data. Over the course of a decade, GAFA (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple) increased their sales from $78 billion in 2008 to $773 billion in 2019. From the outset, GAFA put everything into this new oil, developing data-driven services such as a search engine (Google), online sales (Amazon) and social networking (Facebook).

No, data is not the new oil. Data is nothing like oil. If someone likes to use the data-is-the-new-oil analogy in conversations about the value of data, chances are that they don't understand why data is valuable, or how to extract value from data. If you like to use this analogy yourself, this article is written for your consideration. Many business leaders today believe that their organization is sitting on a gold mine of data, and they just need to find a way to monetize it.

The new open-source IBM Cloud-Native Toolkit is the focus of this week's automation tales. This solution is for individuals who want to integrate and execute AI and machine learning technologies in cloud environments. Codex, a deep learning model that generates software source code, has been revealed by OpenAI. One of the most compelling reasons to adopt a public workspace is to improve developer onboarding by shortening the time to first call (TTFC), the most essential measure for a public API. While Elon Musk's brain-chip company messes around with gaming monkeys, another group of researchers has achieved a major milestone in neuroprosthetics: allowing a man who can't talk to form sentences with his mind.

Artificial intelligence is the new oil, and the governments or the countries that get the best datasets will unquestionably develop the best AI, the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center's chief technology officer said Oct. 15. Speaking on a panel about AI superpowers at the Politico AI Summit, Nand Mulchandani said AI is a very large technology and industry. "It's not a single, monolithic technology," he said. "It's a collection of algorithms, technologies, etc., all cobbled together to call AI." The United States has access to global datasets, and that's why global partnerships are so incredibly important, he said, noting the Defense Department launched the AI partnership for defense at the JAIC recently to have access to global datasets with partners, which gives DOD a natural advantage in building these systems at scale.

Artificial intelligence is the new oil, and the governments or the countries that get the best datasets will unquestionably develop the best AI, the Joint …

Conferences and vendor marketing materials are full of trite and banal sayings. Say something that seems to be profound, and perhaps they'll think that everything else you have to say is just as profound. One of the common refrains you might hear at many an AI and data-focused event is the pithy statement that "data is the new oil" as if that's supposed to mean something profound. The first time I heard this expression (about a decade ago, I should add), it was an interesting point to make about how "important" and "strategic" data is. But every time I've heard it since, it's bandied about to imply something more than it is.

Calling data as the new oil, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman during her Budget speech announced the launch of a new policy to set up data centre parks for enabling digitisation of all public institutions in the country. While announcing the allocation of Rs 6,000 crore to the BharatNet programme, Sitharaman also said that advanced technology such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine learning, cloud computing, drones are disrupting the existent business models and rewriting the world economic order. "Data now is clearly the new oil. I propose a policy to set up data centre farms throughout the country. The idea is to skilfully incorporate data in every step of the value chain," she said.

My iPhone screen time is over four hours every day. Over the last month I've booked restaurant reservations and doctor's appointments, received motorcycle maintenance records, loaded new applications and ordered clothes. All of these actions involved the sort of data exchanges that today's information-based tech companies crave. Applying machine learning tools to personal data can uncover valuable knowledge and generate tremendous business value. With data increasingly seen as "the new oil," many economists, politicians, and others are suggesting people should be paid for the data they produce.

Much has been said about data being the new oil that will fuel businesses in the future. But the reality is that it's not about the amount of data that organizations have access to, but how effective their decisions are based on that data. Therefore, data alone will not be the new oil, rather intelligence will fuel the digital economy, and organizations that can create intelligent business processes to deliver contextualized and consent-based experiences will win in this new data-driven world. As intelligence (and technology in general) increasingly underpins future business models, there is a big question around the role of IT moving forward. The CIO needs to be part of boardroom discussions driving decision-making around the broader business (and digital) strategy.