Driven, Data-Driven?
Inspiration from 007 (the Daniel Craig version)
James Bond has gotten a bit old. He is a bit old fashion, too. Lately his chief opponents seem to be time, retirement, and obsolescence at the hands of computers. So far he hasn’t retired. Time rolls on and the computers keep failing. It is a story that reaches beyond James Bond. It is the story of analytics.
Skyfall and Spectre specifically are tales that provide some great perspective on the analytic process. Both stories draw deeply on 007’s past, his childhood past and his enemies from pre-Craig days. Both pit Bond against computer savvy enemies and both ask deep questions about the efficacy of the MI-6 program. A similar story is being played out within analytic camps around the world.
Unfortunately, for those routing for the machines, the plot lines aren’t changing. History, human decision-making, and innovative thinking get the better of computer algorithms in the end.
Q: Every now and then a trigger has to be pulled.
Though perhaps you thought that was only in the movies. The news keeps reporting breakthroughs in AI — right? Only if you are just watching the trailers… er, headlines.
Corporations and governments of the world are clearly making big investments, some are even feigning results. But if you read the articles, few provide any details. The reality is that Artificial Intelligence remains limited. Far more limited than James Bond (even the older Daniel Craig version) and even more limited than real world analysts. AI remains a process that is chiefly successful in optimization and mass sorting (hardly the stuff of spy movies).
Meanwhile Bond’s technology has gotten a bit less spy movie, too. Gone are most of the strange gadgets and odd technologies. It is another theme that carries over to the world of analytics. Flashy technologies that are more gimmick than outcome have fallen out of fashion. Both in Bond movies and the real world, this is trend that is frustrating many of the fly-by-night software developers.
What hasn’t fallen out of favor? Big budget boondoggles in the name of programs like Big Data, Machine Learning, and 1-to-1 Marketing. These programs are everywhere — from movies to government, from corporations to academia. Only there are few outcomes to show for any of it. Although, Q seems to have a much bigger role as a result…
But then Bond never seems to stop the endless boondoggles either. I suspect he just doesn’t care. To some degree that is true of all data-driven professionals. If your competition wants to throw money away on giant server farms and endless real-time data experiments, why stop them? While they are off chasing fairy tales, you can focus on what really matters.
Thanks for reading! For more from James Bond consider:
