With the unexpected events and constant changes that our world has been facing, it seems impossible to predict the future. It’s full of questions and unknowns. But one thing that we can say with certainty is that Artificial Intelligence will play an increasingly significant role. AI is the future.

The reality is that AI is here now and is so ingrained into our daily lives that there’s no turning back. It delivers the convenience and efficiency that we no longer like to have but expect to get.

We’ve been exposed to AI for years already, especially from the likes of marketplace giants like Amazon and Google. We are no strangers to the use of Amazon’s predictive algorithms to give us product recommendations based on our purchase history. When we type something into Google search, we hardly expect to have to finish typing the phrase, assuming that its machine learning will do it for us. 

Besides our dependence on advanced technology in our day-to-day, AI is a major deciding factor for the future success of businesses and organizations. Businesses are already embracing AI as an ally. Technological innovations keep companies in the game by allowing them to compete, and to increase their profitability and productivity. Without the speed and scale at which machines collect data, results to improve the customer experience and to guide decision-making just arent’ efficient or timely enough. And any entity that doesn’t embrace this partnership will simply become obsolete.

This massive amount of data collection – because it puts the people’s privacy and security at risk – carries a controversial burden. Oftentimes we give away personal information knowingly. We know that our information will be stored in a database and our consumer behavior will be tracked but sometimes we don’t know just how much of our privacy we’re exposing. There’s often a feeling of being “spied on” or the “Big Brother is watching” concept. This is especially true with online and mobile activity. 

There is an inherent trade-off. The more efficient and predictive we want companies to be to serve our needs, the more privacy we forego. This is because, for machine learning, more data is a good thing. The more it gets, the more sophisticated it becomes to anticipate our needs. If data is AI’s fuel, then the concept of privacy becomes more and more endangered.

That’s why the ethical use of Artificial Intelligence is essential. If given the choice, people will favor companies that are transparent about how they use people’s personal data. But what happens when they can’t choose?