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The world is different in 2022. As we begin to emerge from a global pandemic we’re faced with a barrage of new crises that are shaking nations to their core: war, food shortages, broken supply chains, bioterrorism, energy shortages, and inflation. Will data-driven intelligence, now a critical component for countries, business managers, and economic enterprises large and sm...
Digital systems make it possible to identify patterns and trends in global and domestic health that foster better clinical decision-making and ultimately improve outcomes. Simply put: more biological data adds up to more diagnostic and treatment information. To use these effectively, we need to scale up our capacity to aggregate data and build predictive models that allow...
Artificial intelligence, which recognizes patterns in data, images, and sound, is poised to move from the laboratory to the clinic and may upend health delivery in the process. Soon, AI may generate algorithms to calculate an individual patient’s risk of hospital-acquired infection, based on vital signs and other health records, and to predict when it is safe to remove som...
More and more, the decisions that rule our lives are made by algorithms. From the news we see in our feeds, to whether or not we qualify for a mortgage, to the rates we pay for health insurance. And while there are demonstrable biases against marginalized communities caused by algorithms, some say the machines are innocent — they’re just doing math. But as more systems rel...
A defining feature of the American Dream is upward income mobility — the ideal that children will achieve a higher standard of living than their parents. Economist Raj Chetty’s research shows that children’s prospects of reaching that benchmark have fallen from 90 percent to 50 percent over the past half century. Chetty will discuss how big data can help us understand what...
With advances in testing and technology, the world of professional sports is beginning to use data to evaluate athlete health and to predict — and ideally, prevent — injury. Experts equipped with 3D motion capture technology are now essential members of team training staffs. Are these new technologies and recovery interventions increasing player longevity? Will cost-effect...
We live in an interconnected world of volatility and disruption. Systems are linked in a web of dizzying and only partially visible complexity, and change in any one domain has a swift impact on many others. Join Andrew Zolli in a walking tour of emerging tools – such as next-generation satellite imagery, social media, and advanced analytics – that allow us to make sense o...
Whitney Wolfe Herd has been called the queen bee of online dating apps, and has turned long-standing mating strategies upside down and inside out. Employing slogans like “Make the First Move” and “The Future Is Female,” she is the youngest woman to ever take a company public, and she is the rare tech CEO who sees her company as a tool to shape how people behave, online and...
Our laws and policies surrounding the protection of personal information were written for an earlier time, and they need to be completely overhauled for the Internet era. On the one hand, the collection of data — more widespread by business than by government, and impossible to stop — should be facilitated as an ultimate protection for society. On the other, standards unde...
From using Cannabidiol to treat post-traumatic stress disorder to the expansion of artificial intelligence and big data to cure disease to fecal transplant therapy, the sessions and articles here discuss the power and perils of taking the unexpected treatment path.
Pope Francis has praised the internet as "a gift from God," extolling the possibilities it provides for "encounter and solidarity." But on many days, the internet doesn't feel so much like a gift as a curse. Increased access to information through new technologies that connect us has changed the way we live – from our need to immediately respond to emails to our constant p...
Did the results of the Supreme Court's most recent term surprise you? Plus, "big ideas" from Neal Katyal and Emma Robbins.
Many health systems are retooling to provide “patient-centered care,” defined by the Institute of Medicine as a partnership between providers and patients that respects individual preferences, needs, and values. The use of big data to individualize treatment, detect clinical trends, share best practices, and predict the risks of infection and drug side effects is also resh...
Artificial intelligence is working its way deeper into our lives. Intelligent systems are reading and responding to human emotions, playing a critical role in medicine, and gathering vast amounts of data, often without us knowing. Does this kind of technology share our motivations, desires, or hopes for the future of humanity? How can big tech companies and users of AI ste...
From smartphones transmitting our location to ads following us as we browse the web to home appliances and devices watching us in our own homes, we live in an age of ubiquitous surveillance. And our data is not our own. How should big companies be accountable? What are our rights? And what should our rights be? Is monetized data extraction — also known as surveillance capi...
In the age of big data and the rise of the digital economy, no government agency plays a more central — or less understood — role than the mysterious National Security Agency. For years, the so-called Puzzle Palace was so secret that officials joked its acronym stood for “No Such Agency,” — until Edward Snowden published many of its biggest secrets online. Hear one of the...
The science on climate change is clear, yet data alone does not inspire change. We must combine science with powerful storytelling to raise awareness, drive action, and move the world to make big changes. National Geographic Explorers are on the front lines of some of the world’s most pressing issues, documenting and bringing to life the people, places, and species most im...
A large, unsettling question looming among Washington regulators, lawmakers, and now state Attorney’s General across the US is whether the time has come to break up the big five: Facebook, Amazon, Google, Netflix, Apple. Have these powerful tech companies, once the darlings of the start-up community not twenty years past, become so dominant that they are stifling competiti...
Zuckerberg believes government regulation of social media platforms is the best way to handle the complex moral decisions private companies are trying to make on their own.
COVID-19 vastly accelerated vaccine skepticism, such that even routine childhood immunizations, including shots that had largely eliminated measles, are now being questioned. Misinformation can be as contagious as disease, undermining faith in institutions, jeopardizing public health and safety, and distorting clinical decision making. Come watch a live demonstration that...