Perspective on Knowledge: The challenge of emergence

Traditionally, we humans have succeeded at building complex structures by breaking plans down into a multitude of simple, predictable, knowable causes and effects.

Boosting knowledge worker engagement through mentoring

If your employees aren't engaged, knowledge simply can't flow to the extent that's needed in order to compete in the global economy.

Talk a little, type a lot - Will conversational interfaces survive Siri and Alexa?

For the next generation of conversational computing, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the only companies that have enough researchers, enough processing resources, enough motivation, and, above all, enough data to deliver the much- needed improvements are the consumer giants.

Data and our future: too much of a good thing? Not enough? How will we know?

In today's AI-exploded world, analysts and business people loudly call for more data, complaining that cognitive computing and other AI applications need more raw material to build better models and more accurate predictions.

The convergence of convergence

The more systems and subsystems we attempt to stitch together, the greater the unpredictability.

Perspective on knowledge: Behind the scenes of Everyday Chaos

Machine learning builds up a model that connects data points in complex, multi-dimensional ways, usu­ally without yielding the sort of general principles we're accustomed to reason­ing from.

The future of food: a fresh look

There's a growing demand for the ability to facilitate the integration of knowledge generated by widely diverse communities from multiple disciplines.

Usability testing for effective interactivity

Connecting the seeker to the information she seeks is not a new problem. Interaction design has been a stumbling block since the age of the card catalog.

Coming soon to your newsfeed —Ethics and AI

People need to be sensitive to the many ways ethical judgments are being baked into the fabric of their AI projects.

The future of education

Today, we find ourselves in a highly networked knowledge-based economy. This new world demands radically different learning approaches in alignment with complex behaviors of natural systems.

Perspective on knowledge: Tools, senses, and machine learning

Machine learning sometimes extends our cognitive abilities in ways that are alien to our minds.

Perspective on knowledge: Without a doubt

Given that the future is deeply uncertain, from the tiniest of decisions to the largest, we should love carefully calculated probabilities, for they are the way we deal with a world that has no interest in conforming to our projections or desires. They let us rationally prepare for things not going our way. Any strategist or planner worth her salt is getting as good a read as she can on the nature and magnitude of what she cannot predict.

Trends for the ’20s

Providing the right information to the right people at the right time can only be accomplished through greater openness.

Rebooting the information refinery

In the field of knowledge management, of course, the idea of turning data into information into knowledge has been a foundation concept for knowledge managers. But frankly, the ability to achieve this alchemy of data to knowledge has not been broadly demonstrated in practice. A next generation information refinery is required to make something meaningful and valuable out of the raw data flying around the firm and throughout the internet economy.

Crossing the epistemic divide

As the world races ahead, purely data-driven approaches will become less attractive. Instead, we need to start gaining a deeper understanding of how to bridge the great divide which separates the artificial and the natural.

AI: The issue is execution

By demonstrating on Jeopardy! that a machine could understand and analyze many fields of human knowledge and answer questions faster and more accurately than the reigning human experts, Watson's victory created an instant global brand.

Perspective on knowledge: When knowledge isn’t enough

If knowledge is a tool intended to enable us to make decisions that are more likely to protect us and advance our shared interests, then it is clear that knowledge can fail us. Each domain has at least informal rules about what counts as evidence.

Perspective on knowledge: Computers, Internet, AI

If the early computers reinforced the existing world-view, the Internet upended worldview after worldview. We learned that control doesn't scale: If you want to build something really, really big, you have to get rid of the centralized management functions. We learned that customers joined in conversational networks know more about a business' products than the business does. We learned what a democracy is like when everyone truly has a voice, even when those voices are telling lies and tearing down democratic institutions.

Perspective on knowledge: Local values of a global net

Even in regressive regimes that block sites and ideas, Internet apps are implicitly showing people the value of the free—or at least relatively free—flow of information.

Perspective on knowledge: Representing the world

The rejection of representationalism is being hastened by the rise of new technology— machine learning—that is refuting some of our old common-sense ideas.