Fraud, scams, theft, protection rackets, extortion, and ransom claims in cyberspace in the first quarter of the 21st century are as real as highway robbery was in the 19th century. State sponsored, privateer cyber war is real. It is unclear that the good guys will win.

The high trust, low transaction cost era of commerce peaked some years ago. Rising risks, losses, cost and inconvenience is the price we will all pay.

Over five percent of bank operating costs are now absorbed in cyber defence – regulatory compliance, prevention, detection and compensation. These costs now often far exceeding credit losses. We are ready to eat the fruits of low or no cost, fast and convenient access to information but resile from taking responsibility for breaches of privacy and losses we feel no fault for. Our governments have been slow to mount the cyber defense we assume we are entitled to.

Enter AI. The power of AI is to turn data into information - to figure out patterns, to categorise, simplify and present data as information almost instantaneously and at almost no cost. AI presents plausible but not necessarily ‘true’ information. Agentive AI, computer programmes, fed by digital data sources, are rapidly replacing entry level roles in software development and testing, data management, data analytics, call centres, decision support, research, fault diagnostics, document drafting, recording and reporting, auditing and many more tasks. New technologies have destroyed jobs and created work in the past but the pace at which AI is developing and being taken up, and the white-collar jobs being displaced is likely to catch the general population by surprise.

Knowledge, the understanding of information in complex, incomplete, and ambiguous contexts, is beyond current AI capabilities. Even if a system had all the data and had distilled complete, accurate information from all of time and the current context, that system falls short of ‘knowing.’ Knowledge requires understanding. Not only understanding cause and consequence in a non-deterministic world, but understanding unintended consequences, mutations, and randomness. AI falls short.

Then there is wisdom. What is it to be wise? It is not enough to be old; experience helps but not all old people are wise. It helps to have had a vast range of experiences, but not everyone learns from their experiences. It helps to be curious, humble, and open minded, but wisdom needs to be expressed as opinion, not merely as the never-ending pursuit of knowledge.

So what? All I know is that I have seen few wise people in my lifetime and more would have been better. Humanity needs more wisdom than it appears to have at present. Quantum computing holds the promise of making things go faster, but there is little evidence that processing more data faster, generating more information sooner, makes humanity more knowledgeable and it seems even less likely to make us wiser. Wisdom is expressed in the exercise of judgement with foresight in making choices. Reflect for a moment. What are wise choices you have seen others make in your lifetime? What wise choices have you made? In a world of abundant information, misinformation, and disinformation, how do we identify, and promote, wisdom? Rather than taking Sunday as a day of rest, we should take it as a day of reflection.