The Wall Street Journal ran an intriguing story last month about Netflix’s management overriding recommendations coming from the company’s algorithms. Analysis showed that promotions for the comedy “Grace and Frankie” were more successful when they only featured one of the two stars of the show. Apparently fearful of alienating one of their stars, Netflix’s management […]
Skin in the game
I tend to listen more to opinions when people have placed money on their espoused outcome—having “skin in the game”, as Nicholas Taleb calls it in his latest book. However, this robotics developer seems to have gone one better. He literally has skin in the game. Good scientists aren’t supposed to experiment on themselves, but […]
Robot brothels
I’m not sure if robot brothels actually exist, but it seems that we are OK with people visiting them. Two surveys run by the University of Helsinki found that the majority of respondents found it was morally acceptable—as long as you are single. One of the major barriers to the wider use of robots (such […]
Google Dataset Search
Google have created a tool to make it easier to discover datasets—Google Dataset Search. One potential downside is that it requires dataset owners to provide metadata. While the Google brand means that this might get some traction, not all dataset owners are motivated to help the cause. Publication of datasets is now mandated by some […]
Amara’s Law
The current hype around artificial intelligence and machine learning brings to mind Amara’s Law. We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.