Data Summit attendees learned about cognitive computing and how much AI will disrupt the big data space, why blockchain is the next big thing, the importance of GDPR, and more.
During the closing keynote for the two-day Data Summit 2018 in Boston, Joe Caserta, founder and president of Caserta, a data analytics consulting and implementation firm, looked toward the future in his presentation titled “What Does the Data Tell Us?”
Caserta modeled his closing speech around the upcoming release of Bank of America’s Erica, a new virtual assistant the company will be rolling out soon.
He posed the question, “Where is data going and how will we allow it to change our lives?”
“What we’re on the cusp of right now, really just in the past year with using data to make artificial intelligence applications really drive the business, it is really incredible,” Caserta said. “We’re really on the cusp of something huge here and all of us are going to be impacted by it and we’re also going to impact change.”
While there is a lot of fear that surrounds AI, a lot can be gained by humans working together with machines.
“Using data in order to make machines smarter is the basis of everything going forward,” Caserta said.
Data collection will become more commonplace for simple, everyday, tasks, he said. It’s not a stretch of the imagination that virtual reality is also the next phase of evolution.
“That data has always been there, it’s just now we have the means to collect it,” Caserta said.
He believes AI is the next Cultural Revolution that will fuel a change in society, benefitting such industries as healthcare, education, the legal system, and more.
“Life is like riding a bicycle, you keep your balance by moving forward,” Caserta said. “In this day and age in the world of data, there’s no standing still, you’re either going forward or you’re going backward so forge ahead and change the world.”
Data Summit 2019, presented by DBTA and Big Data Quarterly, is tentatively scheduled for May 21-22, 2019, at the Hyatt Regency Boston with pre-conference workshops on May 20.
Many presentations from Data Summit 2018 have been made available for review at https://www.dbta.com/DataSummit/2018/Presentations.aspx.