Competing Intelligence – Humans and Machines
Is Traditional CI Under Attack?
PHARMA CI has been planning the creation of a blog where issues surrounding Competitive Intelligence related to pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, devices, diagnostics and other areas can be surfaced and discussed in a virtual forum.
To begin this endeavor, this blogger had to sit back and ask what is relevant to most of today’s intelligence professionals. Since unlimited topics are available for study and reflective blogging, I thought I’d start by looking at emerging trends and how they may impact the organizations and patients we serve.
That brings me to the topic du jour – are our traditional approaches to competitive intelligence under “quant” attack?
To begin, I want to focus on a recent Forbes.com magazine article entitled Man Vs. Machine on Wall Street. In this article, Gene Network Sciences, a tiny biotechnology company in Cambridge, MA believes it can make Wall Street smarter by getting rid of humans. Super quants (computers) vs quants (humans responsible for quantitative analyses) – let the games begin!
Yes, that’s right. Let’s get rid of the humans, and interject some sensible intelligence into the world’s most dominant financial structure. These days, after looking at my 401ks and IRA’s, I’m willing to give anything a shot in order to shore up the financial mess the world is experiencing.
What’s compelling about the approach is that it is based on the same principles of using supercomputers that Gene Network Sciences uses to help Pfizer and Biogen Idec discover drugs. The reasoning is that the economy and financial systems are very complex networks, not dissimilar, fundamentally, from the networks that genes use to control our cells. According to Colin Hill, who founded Gene Network Systems, market predictions could best be made from all of the trading and other financial data by using computers to do the thinking.
Predictive modeling in finance based on models used to predict new successful medicines is, at the very least, a good starting point for the PHARMA CI blog initiative. Essentially it challenges us to think about how we traditionally provide intelligence and value, and how that model may be under attack because of advances in predictive network computing.
Some will assume that it can never be done. We’ll always need human intelligence in order to do the best job possible. (Hmmm, I wonder. I’m not sold. I can’t help thinking about that computer chip in my car that manages to take over the control of my anti-lock brakes and acceleration when I hit a patch of ice. It provides intelligence more quickly and accurate than I ever could imagine.)
So, what are your thoughts? Does our profession need to be concerned about the quantitative decision-making abilities of computers? Or is this just another flavor of the week. Perhaps a few moments between the covers of Stephen Baker’s The Numerati will provide you with further food for thought.
