Imagine this scene during the closing seconds of an NBA playoff game. ANNOUNCER: Curry has the ball and dribbles down the court. You can tell he is thinking about his shot choice. Should he go for the jump shot or will he attempt the long ball? (clock ticking passed 15 seconds …)  ANNOUNCER: This could decide it all. He steps … Continue reading Changing the NBA 3-Pointer: How Basketball’s Most Notorious Shot Defies Economic Rules and the Impact of Analytics →

When famed mathematician and codebreaker Alan Turing proposed the idea of the Turing test in the 1950s, he was pondering if a computer program could be viewed as intelligent. The question was part data science and part philosophy. Can a machine make us believe they are human, and could there be a point in time when it is … Continue reading Does Chat AI need a Turing Test? What you Need to Know about ChatGPT and Generative Models →

Everywhere I go, I am being followed. You probably are too and I am not sure how I feel about it.  Back in 2009 Google had this idea, a convenient tool really, that would allow people to share their location with others. Novel and useful they thought. No more nagging, “when will you be home?” or “where are … Continue reading Google Has an Eye on You: Is that Ok? →

Spoiler alert:  If you filled out a NCAA Basketball bracket it is busted.  So is mine.  A few years ago, Google’s Alpha Go and its AI machine learning protégé Alpha Go Zero did something incredible.  They won a complicated game called Go against a world champion in a tournament.  It was another milestone for the … Continue reading The Incredible Odds: Why AI can Never Pick the Perfect Bracket →

Sometimes there is nothing better than a shared moment. The Olympic games are a cultural event and one that often brings us together – at least in conversation of the previous day’s highlights. However, events like the Olympics are increasingly rare as a bonding experience and we can only wonder if AI is to blame.  Streaming video … Continue reading AI is Actually Keeping Us Apart: Thankfully the Olympic Games are Here →

I found a phone. That in itself is not too unusual, millions of phones are lost every year. What is unusual is due to privacy, the difficulty I am having in trying to return it to its owner. Privacy has its pluses and minus and is a growing topic amidst the analytics revolution. How much data is too much … Continue reading When Privacy Has Gone Too Far: A Lost iPhone and Pandemic Implications →