I have written about this many times to have a smarter Congress to use speech recognition and to have all sit down together and query so at least they all have the same starting place, but the folks on the hill must be really more digitally illiterate than I thought initially. In April of 2011 I said they should look into this. 
The Quiet Rise of Machine Learning-Like IBM Watson Offers With Speed and Learned Analytics-Congress Needs Technology This To Make Better Laws & Collaborate
After having made their initial investment with IBM, Wellpoint is looking for areas to use the new “big data” capabilities for processing information. I should clarify that I do like technology and used to write code but I also know how queries and reports get spun and how data is flawed and that is my purpose here to wake up the gullible and naïve folks as it happens all around us every day. The folks in Congress seem to think “everything is for those guys over there”.
Wellpoint to Bankroll Use 
of IBM Watson at Cedar Sinai Medical Center to Research Cancer Data/Information To Provide Guidance for Physicians
Also, in April of 2011 IBM Watson was pitched to Wall Street and someone has now bought…
IBM Watson Capabilities Being Pitched to Financial Industry-Congress Must Not Have Felt They Needed This So Further Behind We Fall With Effective Intelligent Lawmaking
Now all formulas and algorithms are not bad but there are those that create “accurate” results and those that have a crafty design to create “desired” results and sadly the two are not the same, although they should be but again we have nobody in Congress is appears to recognize this. Would you not love to see a joint session of intelligent lawmakers querying with big data? Well with the group we have that lives in denial it may never happen.
The Apache Hadoop data processing framework is used for preprocessing the vast amounts of unstructured data collected. So when it comes to flawed data though, we need to be careful as it is the same old garbage in and garbage out if the wrong information is fed in. 
How about some quote stuffing use…hmmmm….again we get left out and thanks again to the digital illiteracy of our Congress the consumers are at the mercy of the the Attack of the Algorithms as they will be for desired results…and you might translate this loosely into another word…money. Guess where the first said applications will be…risk management. Have you not heard enough on that topic of late…everyone does it and over does it too with marketing spun to justify one report after another. 
Attack of the Killer Algorithms–Digest & Links for All Chapters–See How the Math and Crafty Formulas Today Running on Servers 24/7 Make Life Impacting Decisions About You
We want to create jobs but let’s take a look at the technology used by companies, banks and traders today. Why would a company go out and set up a factory, hire employees and so forth when they can grab a few geeks who program, get a cloud service or two and start mining data for sale? Obviously we need balance but have too many companies doing this, so where’s the incentives to create jobs when they can just mine and sell data? Look at Walgreens who in 2010 made just under $800 million in selling data? Now give that some thought and put a finger on the billions that are made mining free taxpayer data, as the geeks will write the algos to mine and format for sale.
Now you wonder why the US has a problem getting more companies to manufacture tangibles? This looks like a pretty simple explanation to me here with running some algorithms and mining data for sale, as there’s little overhead and millions and billions of dollars worth of data at their fingertips to sell. This an attack on consumers as we can’t get ahead this way and everything we either do or do not put out on the web is for sale just about.
Answer…license, tax and disclosure…
Start Licensing and Taxing the Data Sellers of the Internet Making Billions of Profit Dollars Mining “Free Taxpayer Data”–Attack of the Killer Algorithms Chapter 17 - “Occupy Algorithms”– Help Stop Inequality in the US
With IBMWatson at work at Citibank consumers will get further behind the 8 ball here as nobody’s checking the math!
“The amount of market data high frequency traders are using as trading 
indicators continues to grow more rapidly than Facebook can add users or change its privacy policies, and vendors are scrambling to offer new technology that can help firms - and algos - find the data, sort it and leverage it. “
Those Algorithms have big teeth when used for financial gain and nobody knows where the money is…think about it and hopefully IBMWatson will put some audit trails in place too at Citibank. So before you get to excited about “big data” at Citibank…watch this video about context and content and we want to make sure we are not in the world of the “unreadable” to where the banks even gain further advantages over consumers with Killer Algorithms…
Come to think of it, the SEC and FINRA would be a very good place for IBM Watson on the government side, that is if our folks in Congress could ever pulls their heads out of the mud to see that is is real tool that government needs to keep up, as consumers get buried alive with Killer Algos from banks and corporations. We have to fix and fetch all the “flawed data” they dump out there and on our time too. Here’s another good video I have used several times before but it fits here for sure on on the money power and teeth of the algorithms used in financial and other markets and how they go rogue. BD
International Business Machines Corp. (IBM)’s Watson computer, which beat champions of the quiz show “Jeopardy!” a year ago, will soon be advising Wall Street on risks, portfolios and clients.
Citigroup Inc. (C), the third-largest U.S. lender, is Watson’s first financial services client, IBM said yesterday. It will help analyze customer needs and process financial, economic and client data to advance and personalize digital banking.
IBM expects to generate billions in new revenue by 2015 by putting Watson to work. The technology giant has already sold Watson to health-care clients, helping WellPoint Inc. (WLP) and Seton Health Family analyze data to improve care. IBM executives say Watson’s skills -- understanding and processing natural language, consulting vast volumes of unstructured information, and accurately answering questions with humanlike cognition -- are also well suited for the finance industry.
Watson “can give an edge” in finance, said Stephen Baker, author of books The Numerati and Final Jeopardy, a Watson biography. “It can go through newspaper articles, documents, SEC filings, and try to make some sense out of them, put them into a context banks are interested in, like risk.”
In addition to Citigroup, Armonk, New York-based IBM has been working with financial institutions teaching Watson the language of Wall Street, and adding content including regulatory announcements, news and social media feeds. IBM won’t say which other institutions Watson is already working with.
I have been wondering precisely what CITI is doing with this since they claim it is not for trading but for managing risk.
ReplyDeletePS I'm not a robot ;-)