Data

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Discussion

Data is not the oil

A reaction to Evgeny Morozov's article on Data Populism, asking for the nationalization of data.


Duncan Ross:

"Given the current anti-expert feeling, I’m reluctant to criticise a movement that would make better social use of data, but Evgeny Morozov’s call for data populism (“Data populists must seize our information for the benefit of us all”, In Focus, last week) fails on a number of points. He writes of data and artificial intelligence as if they were the same thing: they are not.

More worryingly, he seems to have taken the “data is the new oil” mantra a little too literally. Unlike oil, data doesn’t exist independent of action. It isn’t sitting in the ground waiting to be discovered. It only exists because people take action, and others – often companies – take time and effort (and use money) to collect and analyse it. Similarly, data doesn’t become valuable simply by putting it in a database. Without extensive cleaning, linking and analysis, you’re just paying a large amount of money for storage. And AI doesn’t simply turn data into profit – it takes significant effort (and money) to make AI useful.

It seems Morozov is simply calling for the nationalisation of data without consideration for what that might actually mean: a lost cause, even if it were possible to pin data down to a nation. But there are positive options for making data serve people, not just profits – through the application of data and AI to the public and third sectors. And that is both practical and achievable today." (https://www.theguardian.com/global/2016/dec/11/observer-letters-data-not-new-oil-technology)