Fascination and trap of AI, ML, Blockchain

 Any consultant who says "Future is in AI, Ml or Blockchain", he/she has to be looked upon with jaundiced eye. 

These new-age technologies have become such buzzwords that have created cognitive traps for executives. If the company wants to be disruptive, executives are to be seen as visionary, they have to invest in them, don't they!

What is AI and ML?

When it's difficult to predict from data using rule based logic i.e. "if...then", we can think of deploying Machine Learning which can generalize predictive capability to solve more and more similar problems repeatedly. If there are no generalization then it is probably pure statistics and normal software. If the entire system can run autonomously and reaches a level where intervention of human intelligence is no more required, it is called AI. A good principle to assess if ML can be used is, can a human predict from your stored data. In the end output of system cannot have information that are not available in input.  This is why, IoT based ML are being successfully deployed because all relevant information can be fed into the blackbox which can then predict the outcome. 

What is Blockchain?

Data is stored in "Blocks" and all blocks are linked with each other through "Hash". Any change in data will lead to change in "Hash" which breaks the complete chain. So unless the perpetrator changes "Hash" of all subsequent blocks before someone identifies, data cannot be changed once committed. And it takes a lot of time to edit a single block. It's a distributed database, source of trust and ledger. This level of security comes with price, so do you need it? Unless you are in business of money, tax, law, likely answer is "No". So if someone tries to preach "Blockchain" without understanding your business, you may want to change the preacher.  

So, don't go on shopping spree and buy hammers. Otherwise, everything will look like a nail.