Kozminski Techblog

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Word of introduction to IoT

The Internet of Things is a concept of objects possessing technologies that allows connection to internet and exchange data with other devices connected to it. This technology operates as industry tools as well as in our everyday life and is very common but not many are aware of it. Number of devices with this technology will rapidly increase in next 5 years. It is said that over those 5 years number of devices will increase over 3 times which makes it over 20 billion devices. This fast growth is connected with development of other technologies that allowed IoT to be created. Advancement of sensors, data transfer and artificial intelligence puts IoT in a very comfortable spot for development. Those are the fundaments of modern technologies and thanks to their improvements the by-technologies profits and develop.

Benefits for us and businesses

This technology makes our life much easier and efficient. The benefits vary from having access to other devices through our phones from wherever we are, to having more insight in our health or overall situation. Businesses can also use this technology to enhance their productivity and decision making. IoT will help in many different aspects such as more time and money saved, better insight into what is happening with business which results into adaptation becoming easier and better, increase in productivity, and improvement of service. There are many benefits depending how people will use this technology.

Effect on industries

It is a technology that will revolutionize many industries. As an example let us take a look at industries connected with cars as those could possibly benefit the most from IoT. Car manufacturers already implement some devices into cars. Detection of malfunctions of certain components is done by sensors that alert driver. This IoT-based technology allows the industry to use this gathered data to improve sustainability of cars. Another idea is enabling connection to cars with smartphones. With application like that owner will be able to do many things without even being in a car. Heat up the engine before stepping into vehicle, with improved autopilots cars could be driving them selves where we want them or doing other stuff such as booking appointments to mechanics when there is such need. Logistics will also get many great advancements. This technology will have many ways to be used one of them could be taking the best rout for a truck depending on weather, equipment, vehicle or drivers ability. In the future by combining other technologies with IoT there even could be self-driving trucks. There are many more industries that will benefit as IoT improves. It is impossible to name them all but for example healthcare or manufacturing will also greatly improve

Risk

This technology is still in state of development and to accomplish something spectacular it needs more time. The improvement is fast however, it will take at least couple of years to see those improvements. IoT is some sort of automatization that uses huge amounts of data. With technologies that are based on use of information comes great risk. First what comes to mind is hackers. Cyber criminals in cases like that are a real threat. The potential of hackers grows as new technologies are being developed. Huge amounts of data also could be a problem. As number of IoT devices will rapidly increase in next few years it will highly expand amount of data that has to be stored. Some problems with that may occur. If businesses highly relay on those devices, they may face big problems when it comes to disfunction. When one device is not working properly it may affect other devices which will result into demurrage of work. Making life too comfortable could possibly lead to making people dysfunctional. People will have to many facilities and it may cause too much reliance on those devices leading to some dysfunctions such as increase of dyslexia, depression, anxiety or worsening of cognitive functions. It is impossible to accurately predict all downsides however, we still can speculate and just be aware of this so we do not fall into a trap.

Sources:

https://www.oracle.com/ph/internet-of-things/what-is-iot/#why-is-iot-important

https://www.techtarget.com/iotagenda/definition/Internet-of-Things-IoT

https://www.hcltech.com/technology-qa/what-are-benefits-iot

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Artificial Intelligence has many applications in many fields. Couple of those fields are economy, marketing, entertainment, banking, and healthcare. Here I want to concentrate on influence of AI in healthcare as it is major improvement and has many benefits that not many of us are aware of. Main goal is to replace the human part in many repetitive, easy but time-consuming tasks and to overall improve service quality.

Ability to process data

One of the fundamentals of AI in healthcare is machine learning. It is crucial that it can match syndromes with right disease and choose best treatment based on that diagnose and person medical record. To do that there is a huge resource of data needed including personal data. Luckily the amount of healthcare data is increasing thanks to swift development of big data analytic methods.

Understanding and using human language

Big part that AI plays in healthcare is through Natural Language Processing. NLP is for technology to understand human language. In healthcare it allows to make unusable data, that was considered irrelevant because of the text form, understandable and usable for improving methods and better results for patients.

Rule-based expert systems

There are also expert systems that operate on rules. It is to facilitate the clinical decision-making process. However those systems have their faults. If there are too many rules some of them can collide which leads to irrelevant conclusions. Those systems are slowly replaced with machine learning.

Human-like thinking

Another subset of AI that has high input in healthcare is deep learning. Deep learning is even more useful than machine learning, but those systems are very hard to build, and many requirements have to be met. Deep learning allows computers to analyse more structured data and perform more like human brain. It allows for AI to better analyse images, videos, and multi-layered data.

Assistance in surgeries

AI is also used for surgical robots. Systems analyses data and past operations and enables robots to come up with new better surgical techniques. The recorded results from surgeries assisted with AI robotic procedures are very promising. Patients that had their surgeries made with those devices have less after operation complications and those surgeries seem less invasive.

Conclusion of benefits

To sum up I mentioned many beneficial things that AI brings in healthcare. It allows more precise and faster diagnosis. Replaces human impact in some of tasks which saves much time. Helps with improving and making new better techniques and also facilitate decision making. Some systems even might be able to predict diseases faster and more accurate which will result in saving many lives. Of course we still need time to improve those systems but nonetheless it looks like we are on a good track. Let us now look at the less positive side of this technology.

What are the flaws and disadvantages of this phenomenon?

Work difficulty

First those systems and devices will need to be surveillance by humans. It might be disadvantage and also potential advantage at the same time. The drawback of this is that we will need more human resource to run this industry which may lead to some delays. What I mean by that is if there is some kind of issue with systems or robots employees will need to call a specialist to help them and that may freeze the flow of work and might stop surgeries from being done on time. Also we will need more people with much greater education to run those devices. That may be a potential advantage because it will make more work places. On the other hand if we do not have enough specialists because it is not an easy educational path and it requires great knowledge to do this job it could bring for example collapse of some hospitals or companies.

Imperfect technology

As we know artificial intelligence is not perfect and it has tendencies to be and make some biases. This is still a relatively new technology that is still being developed. Problems that it may cause might not be so significant but still could possibly make some inaccuracies. For an instance those algorithms do not take into consideration the economic background of potential patient so it could come up with solutions that are not viable in specific situation. Another possibility is that when there is not enough data or data is not suitable it can come up with malfunction diagnosis.

Job loses

Every automatization leads to replacing humans. The case is the same in this situation. Some people will lose their jobs because there is no need to pay someone for a job when technology can do it the same or even better and faster than humans. It would be unwise to keep these people around. From point of view of employer, it is a waste of time and money.

Possible cyber crimes

Another aspect of this kind of automatization is that it uses a lot of data. Data is an information about something and if some information is stolen or falls into unwanted hands it creates trouble. Data about our health is especially sensitive and is kept secret in healthcare institutions. Making those information fully digital may bring hackers and cyber criminals because we make it easier for them to operate.

Summary

To conclude artificial intelligence in healthcare is very important and beneficial. However we have to be aware that it has it’s flaws. Overall it brings too much advantages not to be used. Every change has upsides and downsides. Nothing is perfect especially when it is created by humans that by themselves are not perfect. Nonetheless this is the future of our society and it is certain that we should explore and develop those systems more and more but keep in the back of our heads that it is also a potential high risk investment.

Sources :

https://www.foreseemed.com/blog/machine-learning-in-healthcare

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2018/07/27/how-is-ai-used-in-healthcare-5-powerful-real-world-examples-that-show-the-latest-advances/?sh=1ebcf84f5dfb

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5829945/

https://www.foreseemed.com/artificial-intelligence-in-healthcare

https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/what-are-the-pros-and-cons-of-implementing-ai-in-healthcare/140058/

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Cashless society

Let me start by explaining what is cashless society. It is a society where no banknotes and coins are used in any financial transaction. Instead to make a transaction the only way is to transfer money digitally. To do that we can use credit or debit cards, mobile payment applications such as Apple Pay or Google Pay or cryptocurrency. As of today there is no country where all transactions are digital but it is believed that in near future there are going to be at least a few cashless societies. There are some factors that economists point out such as consumer preferences, competitive pressures on businesses, profit seeking by banks and government policies that facilitate cashless transactions. Another major phenomenon that made a big impact on digitalising transactions was 2020 coronavirus pandemic. On that time more and more people started to prefere cashless transactions mostly because of safety reasons but they realized how much easier it is to pay simply using only their mobile phones rather than cash.

Almost cashless

The closest country to be cashless is Sweden. Where only 15% transactions are done by use of cash. Government is making steps towards excluding all cash. Now it is acceptable for retailers and restaurants to refuse cash simply by posting a sign. What is more over half of all Swidish bank branches no longer uses cash. After Sweden other country that is close to being cashless is India.

Advantages

Lets move to advantages of such a society. Firstly the biggest advantage of them all is lowered crime rates. There is no doubt that getting rid of cash will make such an impact. There will be less assaults because no one has cash, less bank robberies nor larcenies of cars that transports big sum of money. Financial crimes will be much harder to make them happen. For an instance drug operations, illegal gambling, black markets, human trafficking all the bad stuff to simplify in all of those illegal transactions the money is paid by cash. When you pay by cash there is no record of transaction and also it is easier to launder. Second of all producing banknots and coins costs, same as storing cash. What is more security is nessecery for banks to protect from bank robberies. All this could go into oblivion in cashless society. Also nice thing we can add to that is that international payments become easier. However even now they are quite easy because of cashless transactions. Banks allow payments by card abroad so you do not need to worry about exchanging money.

Disadvantages

All this sounds promising but there is also a downside to cashless society. Many people that have poor financial situation could be left behing by transition like that. Elderly people could also have a problem with digital-only transactions because most of them are less acquaintanced with tech. Another thing is privacy. Almost every transaction will be visable. For most people it is not a problem but the more data floating around the more likely it is that it will get to unwanted hands. With cash transactions, money you receive or give , are much more private. What could be a really good anchor point not to switch to cashless society for many people. Furthermore when you have all savings on your digital account you will be exposed to cyber-criminals. It is not a popular topic to talk about and it still feels very sci-fi but it could be a real problem. Many people are not aware of cibersecurity and with that much data floating around that is not properly secured, cyber-criminals will for sure take advantage of that. Besides technology problems could be potentialy very harmfull. What is meant by that is there could happen some glitches, technical problems or even problems that are not on your side but by the side of the bank for example. When such a thing happens you could be left without a possibility to pay when you need it. Apart from that it is much harder to control your spendings when you are not using cash. When you use cash you see how much money is left in your wallet which allows you to visually see how much did you spend. With cashless payments it is much more possible to overspend and hit too much of a blow to the budget. Last but not least cashless transactions might become charged with fees. Payment providers could possibly charge it’s users in order to pay by application. Like it is in other way. There is up to three percent charge for credit card and mobile payments. What could make it hard to sustain on the market for small businesses and independent shops.

Conclusion

To sum up there is much to talk about. For now it is impossible to get rid of cash but in future this might be a possibility. For this day there is much more disadvantages rather than advantages of such society. There is no need to cut out all cash especially when it will badly affect some businesses and individual people. It is too much of a risk to switch from cash to digital currency at least for now. There has to be many steps taken to make it even possible for cashless society to function.

Sources :

https://www.britannica.com/story/what-is-a-cashless-society-and-how-does-it-work

https://www.thebalancemoney.com/pros-and-cons-of-moving-to-a-cashless-society-4160702

https://www.unbiased.co.uk/discover/personal-finance/budgeting/a-cashless-society-what-are-the-pros-and-cons