Chapter 2. Strategic Decision Making

In this week's chapter reading, chapter two briefly reflected upon artificial intelligence (AI). We have learned previously that technological advancements are a force to be reckoned with in the business world. Artificial intelligence "simulates human intelligence such as the ability to reason and learn. AI systems can learn or understand from experience, make sense of ambiguous or contradictory information, and even use reasoning to solve problems". With AI in the business field more effective decisions can be made and high costing jobs could be replaced with robotics. The whole idea about artificial intelligence is to try to produce a system that will "re-create" or mimic human intelligence. According to the text, "AI systems dramatically increase the speed and consistency of decision making, solve problems with incomplete information, and resolve complicated issues that cannot be solved by conventional computing".

The article that I chose to read about this week is from the Business Week newsletter entailing artificial intelligence and the creation of a new school by inventor Ray Kurzweil, called Singularity University. The school is located at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. The courses, which have already taken place this past summer, featured "intense three to ten day workshops to help senior executives steer their companies into the future". The school recruited top executives and staffs from such companies as Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, NASA and other corporations to be a part of the staff at the school. Taking this course is costing each individual $15,000, causing many to doubt if the school's mission is truly to help businesses "grasp the implications of fast-changing fields such as biotechnology and robotics". The executive director of Singularity, Ismail says: "If CEOs are not asking themselves big questions about how rapidly accelerating technologies apply to their business, you have to start asking them some questions". At the beginning of the summer, the school received applications from over sixty different countries. We have yet to hear back from any of the Singularity students on what they have gained from the institute.

Business Week Article

Chapter 1. Infromation Systems in Business

Google is one of the biggest companies in the technology and business industry today. Their impact on the business market is massive. My workplace uses all the applications within Google for everything work related (Google Calendar, Gmail, Docs, Spreadsheets, Picasa, etc). You name it, and if it is Google related, then we use it at work. We use it to build a better culture of sharing paperwork, communication, etc. The applications allow the levels within the organization to be interdependent upon one another.

However, according to an article from PC World entitled "Does Google Know Too Much About You?" by Ian Paul, it is daunting that Google may know too much about me and my co-workers; more importantly, our organization and its functionality. Everything that you search for through Google goes through their servers and "Google tracks your online behavior to deliver relevant advertising". That's something that I've never considered. Does it help if you delete your cache and erase your history every time you close your browser for those searches to go away? Besides that though, Google still maintains all of our information through Google Docs and Spreadsheets. Is it safe to maintain important information online then? Google also has access to a lot more information than you can think of too. Through Google Maps they know where your location is, through Google Voice they have a copy of your voice and etc. Google has brought up that the privacy of its users is of importance to them and that they only keep your information for up to 18 months and that it is anonymous. The user privacy information has also been made more aware of on their websites as well. However, one last thing, Google is planning to create its own operating system (OS) called Chrome OS. How much further will the company go and where will the new OS put the company on terms of privacy? People fear that Google will be able to access your “online behavior” even offline. My concern for Google is not quite that high yet but this article has truly got me thinking about keeping my personal information online and who uses my computer to search for what.

Check out the PC World article here.