Search
Close this search box.

Tag: data

Good News: The World is Getting Better

This week I want to discuss how our perception of the world shapes and guides our decisions about the future. In a previous blog, I discussed the power of narrative and how important that is in constructing reality. In this post, I want to challenge a prevailing perspective of doom that dominates the narrative in airwaves, broadcasts and most of social media. The dominant message is that our present world order is falling into chaos with no hope for redemption. This is not just a problem for large Media corporations that need to prey on fear in order to sell news but it has become the de facto perspective on any conversation about national and/or global affairs.

I want to start by making a simple statement: the world is getting better.

Let me take a step back and propose a new paradigm. What if we look at the globe not from the anecdotal evidence highlighted by media stories but actually more like a CEO looks at his/her company? What would that look like? Working for a large corporation for many years, I spent countless hours preparing presentations for executive leaders so they could understand the state of their business. The story told in these meetings is built on numbers and data. The narrative flows from pre-determined agreed-upon measures of success that allow the leader to see whether their unit is on track or not to meet their goals.

One could say that such view does not tell the whole story. That is indeed true. A company may be doing really well but that may not safeguard all employees from the threat of being laid off. For that employee, a profitable quarter means nothing. However, if the numbers are showing times of distress ahead, the story of many employees will be impacted. If the business goes bankrupt – everybody loses their job. Therefore, regardless of how dry numbers may be, they point to eminent signs of trouble that we must attend to. We ignore them at our own peril.

So, if you are the CEO of the globe, what would be some important performance metrics to look for? Thankfully I found this great blog by Bj Murphy that does exactly that, highlighting the trends around important issues like extreme poverty, wars, life expectancy, child mortality and others. The numbers show an undeniable improvement in all these key measures for the last 50 years. Believe it or not, these measures disprove the adage that “things were better in the olden days”. This is not to say that everything is getting better but such overwhelming data should make us pause to celebrate. Things are getting better in many fronts if we just have the eyes to see them.

Are we happier then? Well, if data is any indication the answer is “no.” In fact, quite the opposite, rates of depression are increasing world-wide. There could be many reasons for that. It is not clear, for example, whether people are simply more depressed or whether now we are able to better diagnose it and hence see an increase. Even allowing for that, this data is a sharp contrast to the one from the paragraph above. At least from these two pieces of data, we can conclude that a better world may not necessarily be a happier world.

Re-imagining the Present for Creating a Better Future

An unsung hero of the advances touted in BJ’s post is the rise of technology and science in the last century. If there has been a positive story, it is how science and technology have improved the quality of life. Yet, one can never forget the technology also brought the atomic bomb to our planet. They themselves could never be the answer for a better world but they have certainly enabled dreamers to make it a reality. This seems to be not only reality but also perception. In a recent Pew research survey, 42% of Americans indicated that technology has made their lives better, by far the biggest factor in a list that included medicine, civil rights and the economy. Technology advancement is one of the few narratives of hope in a sea of depressing storylines.

Here is important to highlight that perception is very relative to where we stand in relation to the past. Recently, white older men in the United States as a cohort have experience rising rates of depression and anxiety. One explanations is the sense that their life conditions have deteriorated compared to their parents. The question is not whether the world is getting better but whether “my” world getting better. This is not particular to the cohort of white older males but to all of us. This question is always asked with a point of reference in mind. Yet, is it possible to celebrate positive change even if our personal universe has deteriorated?

The first step towards imagining a new future is assessing the present from the perspective of the most vulnerable. If the world has indeed improved for them, then there is reason to celebrate. The data above supports this perspective. While there have been losers in recent change and much work is left to be done, the good news is undeniable.

From Tech Consumers to Tech Creators

If technology has made life better, it has also made it more complicated. Any PC user who had to endure using Windows for a while will realize that all the convenience brought by technology comes at a cost in complexity and troubleshooting. I believe part of the problem is that most of us approach technology as demanding consumers. That is, we expect technology to provide a pain-free solution to our problems. This is precisely the message large tech companies want us to believe: technology will solve all our problems and make life easier for everybody. That is often not the case.

To fully harness the benefits of technology we must move from consumers to creators of technology. Last week I was inspired by this story of an 11 year-old girl who invented a water tester to detect water contamination. When interviewed, the girl said she was moved by the story of water contamination in Flint, MI and wanted to do something about it. She exemplifies a true technology creator who took upon herself to solve a problem she cared about. Technology creators do not just use tech for convenience, they leverage it to solve problems. They use their God-given creativity to make the world a better place.

What if we could educate children and young adults to do more of that? What type of world could we build?

Why AI Theology?

My path here was certainly not intentional or carefully planned. For years, I’ve been asking ‌ how could I marry my work skills with my passion. Becoming a data scientist was not a carefully planned career. I kind of fell into it. Like many people in the workplace, my career arose out of a blend of opportunities, skill sets, curiosity and providence (a word I prefer from luck). I started working for a large bank right out of college. My initial plan was to do that for “a few years” until I would start doing what I was “called” to do. These few years turn into a decade and then more years. Throughout this time, I wondered what in the world I was doing in my job. That is also when I started pursuing a degree in Theology, in the hopes of a career change. For years, I saw these pursuits as separate endeavors, failing to see much connection between them.

As I started studying Theology while still working as a data scientist, I was constantly straddling these two worlds. They tap into different parts of our brain, requiring different skills. As a data professional, I see the world through tables organized in columns and rows. My primary function is to extract meaning out of these tables either by combining them, creating new ones or visualizing their information in clarifying ways. This can happen through summarization or modeling. At times, I am trying to answer questions while others, I am simply exploring the data.

As a Theology student, I see the world through text. We start with sacred text, written two Millennia ago in languages not spoken today. Beyond that, we work with an ungodly (no pun intended) amount of books based on reflection on the sacred text between the time the sacred texts were written and our present day. Beyond that, you reflect on the experience of the believing community and academy that enriches, confuses and at times undermines the sacred text. Yet Theology is not only about books. It is ‌about being human – how we experience the world around us and speak hope into it. Theology also informs and shapes values, morals and ideologies. That is ‌what has drawn me to it from an early age. So, even as the Sacred texts are studied and analyzed, that is a sense of gravitas often missing from most forms of knowledge.

While navigating these two world concurrently, I often saw them as incompatible. It is not that they are opposed to each other but that they seem to talk past each other. They ask different questions, seek other means to pursue answers and arrive at widely different conclusions. At its core, Theology is mostly concerned with how things should be. Data analysis strives to be a detached assessment of how things are. One example of that would be ‌global warming. Theology is mostly concerned with the moral implications of what causes global warming and how people will be affected. It then proposes an alternative way to relate to the environment, inspired by Christian revelation, that will lead to a more just future. A data analysis approach will look at past trends and then make assumptions for future forecast. Scientists gather heaps of data, develop complex models that provide benchmarks that will guide planning for the future (ie: an % increase of CO2 ‌ as the benchmark being discussed in the recent gathering of world leaders). Data analysis will also use test and control methods which determine which one has yielded the best results. A theological approach is not interested in what has worked but what is good.

As I approached the end of my theological education, I found myself longing for integration. In that pursuit, I began to ask what it would look like to interact Theology with technology. This convergence started taking shape as breakthroughs in computing power, big data and promising algorithms ushered Artificial Intelligence to the spotlight. Because data science is an essential part of AI, I saw opportunity in the horizon. As industry titans make their bet on Artificial Intelligence, data science became a promising field for employment. If these investments yield concrete applications, data science will become a regular function of organization across all industries just like finance and accounting is today.

Apart from the impact on data science, the advent of Artificial Intelligence raises profound questions. The idea that machine could act in such human-like manner that we may confuse them with people is mind-boggling. This clearly marks a new era of technological advancement requiring a  multi-disciplinary engagement. Simply put, will human-made intelligence mirror our best or our worse? In that question, I believe the Christian tradition has much to contribute.

Yet, I don’t see many voices addressing the intersection of technology and Theology effectively. At best, these topics are discussed separately as if they did not interact. This in turn becomes my personal attempt to integrate the very worlds I live in, with the hopes it may bring insight and wisdom in answering the perennial question: How shall we then live in a world where Artificial Intelligence is a reality?

Here is a list of topics I plan to address in this blog:

  • What are the ethical implications of the increasing use of AI applications in our world?
  • What would it look like to do theology with AI and vice-versa – what would a theologically-informed AI look like?
  • Can AI be used for good and what would that look like?
  • Who gets to decide how AI will affect our way of life?

These are just a few questions worthy of exploration. Let the conversation begin.