What is technology predicting about you now?
When you have been watching your favourite streaming service have you noticed that suggestions on what else you may want to watch appear? This is a basic form of what is called Predictive Analytics and trillions of dollars are being invested in mining data to predict everything about you. It is not just about predicting your buying patterns or your political persuasions. It is much more.
This year I attended a university course on the Future of Work in America and almost half the course was about how organisations were investing in prediction; From identifying the best people for the job, when people would resign, when people were stressed, who would be the best person to be on which team and the list goes on. This is called specifically People Analytics and the global market for this technology alone is expected to grow from 3.9 billion US in 2016 to 14.9 billion by 2023.
It does not stop there. Methodologies are being built to identify who is actually typing on a computer by analysing peoples spelling mistakes, speed of typing and sentence structures. Mood predictors are also being developed by monitoring breathing patterns, eye movements and facial expressions. Reasons include identifying when employees may need a break, reduce stress or encourage more productivity.
According to Robert Plomin a psychologist and behavioural geneticist, DNA testing can predict how well people are going to perform at school and can be conducted before children start school. This can be useful to help direct learning and focus resources however it may have unintended consequences if not managed carefully.
Predicting our future health by DNA testing is becoming very topical. In the UK 8% of the population has a genetic risk of a heart attack. If those people are aware of that genetic risk, they can proactively influence lifestyle factors. The idea is forewarned is forearmed. It does however raise other ethical considerations like insurance and employment discrimination.
Predictive Analytics is progressing very quickly and as it provides fabulous opportunities, it is also raising concerns including the reliability, privacy, ethics and unintended usage.
In some instances, organisations before investing in predictive technologies are engaging experts and teams within their organisation to consider the unintended consequences of these technologies. They are also educating their executives and boards on what they have to understand to contribute to their decision making. They have learnt from other mistakes like the justice system in America, which used predictive technologies to identify which criminals were likely to offend. The inaccuracy of the data had significant consequences on black men. They don’t want the same type of consequences to happen in their organisation.
The wise organisations, will educate themselves on predictive analytics, consider the unintended consequences and adjust their decisions accordingly.
