Would you trade your digital privacy for free pizza?
How can facial data improve shopping experiences? Can AI make us healthier?
— All included in this week’s curated data digest below. 👇
Would you trade your digital privacy for free pizza?
According to a new study co-authored by Susan Athey, a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, there is a disconnect between people’s stated privacy preferences and their actual choices.
The findings show that people say they care about protecting their personal information but can be swayed by a reward so simple as a free pizza.
How can facial data improve shopping experiences?
Dylan Gerard explains the pros and cons of retailers using AI-powered facial recognition.
This data has the potential to help retailers improve the shopping experience for their customers BUT they need to be transparent, ensure data is securely stored and only analysed in aggregate to protect the privacy of individuals.
Rahul Telang, professor of information systems at Carnegie Mellon University, states that hacking is inevitable so data needs to be aggregated to protect private information and minimise any potential breach damages.
Side note -> this study by Criteo and Forbes Insights demonstrates that retailers are looking to data co-operatives as a way to counter competition from the e-commerce players.
A new report by the Centre for Data Innovation think tank ranked the UK the 3rd most innovative country in Europe when it comes to utilising data.
In order to continue our data success, businesses must ensure robust frameworks are used to handle data.
The best practice for analysing higher quality datasets is through decentralised and aggregated models — pooling data in a central repository is too risky (the Equifax breach has affected 694,000 UK customers).
→ US lawmakers have called for reforms for Equifax and its rivals TransUnion and Experian.
Can AI make us healthier?
Writing for MIT Technology Review, David Ewing Duncan discusses how iCarbonX (ICX) want to use large data sets to improve preventative care.
ICX is aiming to continuously monitor health data (including DNA sequencing, wearables and frequent blood tests) to make diet and behaviour adjustment suggestions before “you slip from being healthy into the early stages of an illness”.
Zenome is using decentralised tech to enable consumers to sell their genetic data. They claim this info will only be made available for medical research and testing, but what would happen if this marketplace was opened up to insurance companies or employers? — Guide to monetising data.
Miscellaneous
GitHub Octoverse 2017 — highlights from the last twelve months. 💜
Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp. 🕵
How does innovation work? 📈
The shockingly low cost of influencing an election. 😳
This fake Adblock Plus plugin has been downloaded over 37,000 times. ⛔
W.E.B. Du Bois’s visualisations of black life for the World’s Fair of 1900. 👏
Maps without New Zealand. 🙈
Finding the right colour palettes for data visualisations (image above). 💯
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