Max Wu Blog

Is the Big Data only brought the positive development? 2016.11.08

        As I said in the last blog, nowadays, people rely on the Big Data to help them analysis and make a decision in the various areas such as Business, Medicine and even Meteorological and so on.  How amazing for the Big Data！！  Comparing to the traditional method, Big Data is more accurate, more specific and faster.  It seems that Big Data could replace all of the traditional analytical methods, isn’t it?  In this blog, I will illustrate that Big Data have some negative impacts on our lives and some potential risks with Big Data.

Is the Big Data really security?

        As similar in any historical eras, new developing things are usually brought opportunities, innovation and even risks.  Therefore, while the Big Data shows the more profits, giant value in economy and better individual services, people must to consider some negative potential problems.

Data Security Problem

        Because Big Data is a combination from massive discrete databases, analysts could get more useful and significant information through different models and combination methods.  This useful information is usually offered from some databases which look completely unrelated or no harmful to people.  As a consequence, in some times, we could claim that if we get enough unrelated information, it would provide the value information what we wanted.  For example, during industrial age, the developed countries sold slag what they think is rubbishes to the developing countries, but the developing countries could make slag has a strategic value.  So, in my opinion, governments have to make a strict law in order to prevent some illegal events. 

Firstly, who could collect database?  

        There are two collection ways to collect databases. One is through legal authorization, such as government agencies, and another one is through the search engine, such as Google, FaceBook and Amazon.  This is a very complex problem, but I think firms should follow two basic rules.  First one is profit rule which means that the situation what if firms want to collect data from people, the propose should be satisfied individual benefit.  Second one is that notification and permission which means that firms should notice and be permitted from people if they want to collect data from people.

Secondly, who can trade the Big Data?

        Because Big Data could make unrelated information through a specific model becoming useful information.  Sometimes, it might related to national secure problems, therefore, government should pay more attention to operate this issue.

Finally, how to supervise the transaction and production in Big Data

         With the democratization of the trend, people pay more attention to privacy than public message.  Governments should emphasize the potential risk in Big Data.  Furthermore, some countries have started to face these problems.  For example, America stopped using USA PATRIOT Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001) which is a law about monitoring their citizen’s call records extended as long as 14 years.  Moreover, the EU adjudicated that business companies, especially Google, should delete their citizen’s information in six months.  In the May of 2016, the UK government released the first edition of Big Data ethic called Data Science Ethical Framework.  In order to more clearly protect the privacy and security of databases, the UK government discussed this issue for a long time.  Therefore, they hope that government departments should follow six rules when they use Big Data in the future(DSEF).  All of cases are illustrated that governments should protect their citizen and social security in the Big Data generation.

The Bias Problem

        Could we image that if some one is a Big Data Analyst but has a bias.  Then, what it will happen?  I will say it is terrible, in addition, the result from his model is totally useless.  Although we know this is a serious problem, some true cases are still working in the world.  FTC (Federal Trade Commission) published a research: ”Big Data: A Tool for Inclusion or Exclusion? Understanding the Issues” pointed out that firms should ensure that it is legal, minimize risk and avoid a bias on January 2016.  Furthermore, on May 2016, the White House also pointed that there inadvertently discriminated some specific citizens by using Big Data in their Big Data Report called “Big Risks, Big Opportunities: the Intersection of Big Data and Civil Right”. Let me show you some significant cases.

• Using Big Data to Predict Criminal Probability

         According to the ProPublica report (called “Machine Bias”), the risk assessment score has a serious bias in the Black people due to using Big Data to predict criminal probability in the future.  The report said that the White defendant is usually identified as a low criminal risk, on the other hand, the Black is usually identified as a high criminal risk because of the bias Big Data model.  By this assessment score, the probability of the Black will crime over double than the White.  I could not image that how much Black people is innocent but punishment.

• The Bias is Hidden in the Big Data neutral objective

       With Big Data application, bias is hidden in the technology neutral because most of people believe that application of software and algorithms are objective.  However, one reason might need more database as well as collect the specific group not the whole group.  Another reason I think is the problem from programming designer such as imperfect logistic, model and even they have an original bias.

        To sum up, we know that using the Big Data is a trend and it is actually useful in 21 century. However, with the Big Data application more and more, there are appearing some negative impacts including the personal information problem and the model bias problem.  Governments should figure out this problems to protect their people.  In my opinion, companies have a responsibility to protect the database which their collected to be stolen and then they should delete the data when they finish the analysis.  They can not sell the data to others companies, exactly it is not only illegal but also immoral.  In order to build the firm’s reputation, they should follow the regular by themselves.  Finally, Anderson (2008) claimed that the numbers speak for themselves if there have enough information.  In the Big Data World, I hope that it could be used in more areas as well as innovative now.

Reference:

Anderson, C. (2008) The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes The Scientific Method Obsolete, Wired, Available at:< https://www.wired.com/2008/06/pb-theory/> [Accessed 08 November 2016]

Chen, Y. W. (2016) The Big Data Uses Potentially Bias Risks, Info Security, Available at :<http://www.informationsecurity.com.tw/article/article_detail.aspx?tv=&aid=8311&pages=2> [Accessed 08 November 2016]

Data Science Ethical Framework, Available at:<https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/data-science-ethical-framework> [Accessed 08 November 2016]

Harvard Business Review Staff (2014) With Big Data Comes Big Responsibility, Harvard Business Review, Available at:<https://hbr.org/2014/11/with-big-data-comes-big-responsibility> [Accessed 08 November 2016]