Of IOB and other things

When I first heard the term IOB, I thought it was something related to that bank. We’ve one of its branch office, very near to our street, in existence for more than 5 6 decades. The more I began to read about it, the more I realized it had nothing to do with the bank, but a whole different concept called Internet of Behaviors. I have vaguely heard of IOT – Internet of Things. But this was not just a new term but was quite intriguing as a title in itself. Quite interestingly it was aptly named as well. As a consumer, as an end user, as a professional, as a kid or as any other categorization possible, the general classification of user behaviour on the net, how it can be mined or analyzed to arrive at custom solutions, packaged on the need of the individual, happens to be the gist of this concept. Couple of weeks back I was reading about hyper personalization. The term was the buzz word with the famous cadbury’s ad, using AI, rousing the interests of many about this topic. One thing that was intriguing was, the flip side of these custom setups. How does the system know what I like, what I want, where I live and who gave them the authority to decide on my behalf? On one hand it may actually be the help factor that the product people are quoting being the actual reason behind such ideas. But if history of human intelligence and invention of new technologies are anything to go by, weaponizing any useful tech and mastering it for mass destruction has always been the most common end state for most of the new tech. Come to think of it, there had actually been weapons that have mutated into common place things for general public, with Internet in itself being a case in study. But the threat overshadows the benefits of such inventions. In all probability and quite possibly in reality as well, these data about general public are already being analyzed by a zillion systems and we may already be neck deep into the scenario of data piracy vs privacy without even realizing. Matrix could well be the script leaked from the future with Terminator about to be seen. The more drones I see with weapons on air, I dread the day “Skynet” will rise. It does lead to a cool scenario of an Arnie robot saying “I am back” and “Astla vista” though. Nevertheless, all those jokes and movie scripts about future, when you actually live to see them happen, it doesn’t just give a sense of deja vu but also a sense of dread of what else is coming. There used to be a most forwarded joke, set in the mid-21st century, about a guy trying to open his fridge via voice command. The fridge will keep throwing instructions and messages to him about what he should eat and what he can’t based on his health and other data. He would get angry and try to raise a complaint, encountering similar kind of a setup where in his own data would be restricting him from doing things he like on the pretext of his own welfare. How many ever computers form a network with zillions of processing capacity, nothing matches the concept of free will. This is one aspect of human emotions that can never be logically replicated across any systems because 9 out of 10 times, it will  be wrong or leading to failure. Yet for every single success instance, the entire human history had undergone such a mass upheaval that, it has been the one source of strength that sets us apart from every other being. Call it Ahimsa, capitalism, communism, globalization, trade, war, money. The ability to decide something different out of the blue and gathering mass appeal and support for the same, based on near to nothing logic, could sound stupid and ridiculous to any algorithm driven setup based on logic. But this has been the single common thread that has sustained humans across eras and would hopefully continue to do so in future as well.