Odyssey 2020: a “data” Odyssey.
5 Challenges in an intelligent and hyperconnected world in acceleration.
5G will be available from the next year 2020 and will foster a great deployment of IoT and AI, progressively intensifying the perception of immersion in a more intelligent and hyperconnected world, and generating important challenges concerning data use, referring to the aspects of Security, Privacy, ethics, and legality.
Challenge 1. Privacy in the use of devices, in addition to browsers and mobiles.
A good example is the voice assistants and the possible problems for the Privacy that have shown as in the cases of Google Home, Amazon Echo, and Alexa, being able to record the conversations at home in certain circumstances, without knowledge of the users.
Challenge 2. Business Security.
A global Cyber-edge report on Cybersecurity in companies shows worrying data on the number of cyber attacks that are carried out, affecting more than 70% of companies in the last six months. And they are successful on average by 90%.
Challenge 3. Security and Privacy in IoT and Smart Cities
Within a fragmented current landscape, some initiatives regarding IoT are the different Cybersecurity alliances that manufacturers are carrying out to share information and align in compliance with standards. For example, the Cyber Threat Alliance, the Global Cyber Alliance and the Trusted Computing Group.
For the Smart Cities, the G20 Global Smart Cities Alliance on Technology Governance has been created, which uses references such as the IoT Guidelines of New York City.
Regarding the Privacy in the city, it is key a rigorous regulation in order to avoid some well-known cases in the improper use of the data or to limit some applications such as facial recognition to ensure a respectful use with privacy.
In this sense, Europe seems to have a good base and some leadership after the application of the GDPR.
Challenge 4. Ethical design of intelligent and autonomous systems.
To dedicate a special chapter to ethics, I think it is interesting to include a document for the ethical design of Intelligent and Autonomous Systems prepared by the IEEE, with the aim of having “A vision that prioritizes human well-being with respect to autonomous and intelligent systems”.
In this curious application from MIT, called ‘Moral Machine’, you can see how many different scenarios can be found by autonomous vehicles.
Challenge 5. Security and Justice in Artificial Intelligence applications and robots.
Despite the existence of associations such as Partnership on AI, or AI Now Institute, which in its last review of the year 2019, indicates the main aspects to follow to avoid a harmful application of AI, it is not always easy to implement a “fair” application, due to the so-called “bias” in algorithms.
And perhaps the most difficult component of the challenge will be precisely to ensure that cybersecurity wins the game against cybercriminals, who also make use of Innovation in AI for their purposes.
Anyway, we are still in an “initial phase of artificial intelligence” known as “Narrow AI”, and there is a long way to have the so-called General AI, planned for the environment of 2050, so that we still don’t have to worry too much about other challenges that will come later, such as the one that science fiction already predicted in the mythical movie “Odyssey 2001”, in which the HAL computer revolts and does not obey human orders …
Meanwhile, we’ll be able to enjoy with small “odysseys” in a shorter horizon as flying in this type of electric vehicle, possible from 2025, when 5G will move more than 25% of mobile data traffic.
And it seems that also for flying cars would be feasible soon to have autonomous vehicles.
