Why did Gartner rank the Internet of Behaviours (IoB) at the top of the 9 tech trends in 2021?
Internet of Behaviours (IoB) simply means using data to change human behaviours. Gartner concluded that the current data sources that can be collected include:
- business customer data;
- citizen data processed by public departments and government agencies;
- social media;
- public domain deployment of facial recognition; and location tracking.
Based on the collected information, user behaviours can be influenced through feedback loops.
Do you think data feedback can really affect user behaviour?
Take my auto insurance company TD Insurance as an example. TD insurance has launched a mobile app called TD MyAdvantage. When driving, the system will automatically detect various indicators, including vehicle speed, mileage, time of day, rapid acceleration, hard braking and hard turning. Every time you arrive at your destination, you can see the real-time feedback on the APP.
When you renew the premium, the insurance company will provide standard premium discounts based on the collected data, up to 25%. Indeed, after seeing real-time feedback, most drivers will pay attention to indicators with low scores the next time they drive and will drive more carefully. But because it’s an application, when you don’t want the insurance company to detect it, you can simply close it. So to get the discount, the insurance company requires that you must use the app for at least 120 days, and your app must record 1,000 kilometres or more.
This is the usage-based insurance (UBI) that we have heard of in recent years. The better you drive, the lower your insurance premium. Some insurance companies also provide several other ways to monitor driver behaviour.
Data Security Concerns
Remember that when you sign this type of UBI project, be sure to clarify the terms. For example, will the insurance company increase your premium based on the monitored data? If someone else drives your car, or when you are a passenger, does the monitoring system have a means to distinguish that driving is not yours?
Regarding data security considerations, imagine that the insurance company knows where you are driving from, where you are driving to, and when you drive during the day. If this information is obtained by criminals, it is easy, for example, to plan a kidnapping case or other criminal activities.
Prospect
But IoB has become a technological trend and will significantly influence our behaviours and life.
The author of “Data Civilizations”, Tu Zipei, once calculated that using a camera to record a person’s behaviours for 24 hours will generate 4G data in one day, and about 143 terabytes of data will be generated in 100 years. According to the current price of a hard disk, it only needs 50,000 yuan, around $7,500 US dollars to store the data generated during 100 years.
Now we are still considering which data needs to be recorded, and perhaps in the near future, what we really concern is which data does not need to be recorded.
What are your views and questions about the Internet of Behaviours?
I recorded a video for your reference.
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