Decision, decisions: What do I fancy for lunch today? Do I want a girlfriend? What should I do with my life? Too many questions and not enough time for me to resolve them. So what if there were a Website that knew me well enough to automatically answer all my questions? Wouldn’t that be the next big Internet thing, the definitive answer to all our questions?
Divining intent has always been the Holy Grail of academics, doctors, marketers, and snake-oil salesmen. At the beginning of the 20th century, Sigmund Freud founded the school of psychoanalysis, a science of intentionality based on interpretation of dreams. And today, 100 years later, a new generation of quacks has founded a school of crowd-sourced intentionality.
The father of this digital school of intentionality might be Eric Schmidt, the CEO of search engine Google. Back in 2006, when asked by a Financial Times reporter where he wanted Google to be in five years, he answered that he imagined the search engine would become so intelligent that it would know not only what its user wanted to do that afternoon, but also what career they wanted to pursue.
While Schmidt’s hubristic dream is nowhere close to being realized by his Google search engine, other Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors have continued to chase this happy dream by using all the latest algorithmically personalized crowd-sourced tools of the Web 2.0 revolution. The latest entrant into the race to automate human intentionality is Hunch, a year-old company that is building what it calls a crowd-sourced "recommendation engine," which knows us well enough to answer all our questions. Hunch claims to build a personalized algorithm that supposedly is able to learn our intentionality.
Hunch represents la crème de la creme of Silicon Valley. Founded by the mother of Flickr 's Caterina Fake, with illustrious board members like Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, Hunch has just raised a $12 million round of venture capital investment led by blue chip fund Khosla Ventures.
The truth is that Hunch, which is a bad mash-up of Google and Wikipedia, doesn’t work on any level. The crowd-sourced content on Hunch is mostly banal, sometimes absurdly so. For example, in response to the question, "How should I express my condolences?", one user-generated answer suggests "Attend the deceased funeral," while another advises us to "Send flowers."
Duh. Is this the best that Silicon Valley can offer us? Is this the sum intelligence of Fake, Khosla, and Wales? Do I really need a crowd-sourced Website to explain to me that the best way to express my condolences after a death is to attend the funeral of the deceased?
And the algorithm doesn’t work either. When I signed up for Hunch, it asked me a series of dumbly automated questions about my consumer preferences that barely skim the surface of the tangled web of desires that feed my intentionality. Human beings like you or me don't operate exclusively from silicon-based logic (well, at least I don't). We can’t be figured out by answering a few random algorithmic questions of an unthinking machine.
The problem with Hunch is that it treats me as a crass consumer rather than as a complex human being. Web 2.0 algorithms might succeed at building search engines that are, at best, 50 percent accurate. As such, Hunch represents the intellectual bankruptcy of the Silicon Valley revolution that has attempted to replace real human expertise and knowledge with bad algorithms and even worse user-generated content.
When it comes to determining what I want, crowd-sourced algorithms are about as accurate (and scientific) as Freudian dreams.
— Andrew Keen, Silicon Valley author, broadcaster, and entrepreneur, can be reached on Twitter at @ajkeen.
Well said! Imagine how the world would like if our decisions have all been so exquisitely logical as the binary processing in computers. But alas! we are inherently humans and such has the propensity to head in directions that defy logic/common sense. Who knows perhaps Hunch will incorporate that human flexibility in its algorith. When that happens please let me know so I can join the Hunch bandwagon.
Exactly. What algorithm would you have to use to 'simulate' an intelligence that is so free it can choose bondage? There is none, and will never be one. Although our brain has similarities to binary processing, we can on every moment choose to go into the opposite direction of the most logical at a give time.
Is this like 20Q but for grown ups? I didn't do much research, but if I choose "sunglasses" as the first topic, don't I know what I want? to buy one, repair one, etc?
Perhaps websites such as these would be an alternative to "readings" based on palms, horoscopes, or cards for people who really do want someone else to advise them what to do. Of course, no one's advice, whether it is from a friend, relative, or expert is infallible. Even someone who knows you quite well may be wrong when assuring you that you would love a particular movie or book. If Hunch get more information than the purchase history that sites like Amazon rely on, it should be better at predicting which particular forms of entertainment, food, and fashions would appeal to the individual. Once it has enough information, Hunch may be fairly accurate. But I really believe its true value would be to sell lists for advertisers. .
It is funny how many websites try to guess what else you'd like based on things you've already looked at or purchased. Amazon does this so does iTunes. And sometimes I do try a recommendation, but most times I don't. I don't see the value in letting the computer tell me what to do or like. That's why Hunch won't be a site that I use. I like to make my decisions. This is on Hunch's FAQ pages:
"How accurate should I expect Hunch's results to be?
Hunch gets smarter in two ways. First, since Hunch is powered by collective user knowledge, topics mature over time. Newly submitted topics often won't be very smart at first, but as more and more people train and refine them, the topics will get much smarter. Second, Hunch's recommendations will become increasingly customized for you the more Hunch gets to know you. How does that happen? By your trying many topics and also answering the 'Teach Hunch About You' questions which appear on the top right of the homepage and in the 'About' tab as you answer a topic's questions"
So, all in all you'd need to spend a lifetime for Hunch to really get to know you and who has that kind of time? Plus, if I ever need advice, that's why I've got friends, not websites.
Amazon already tries to guess what browsers would be interested in buying by offering choices based on previous selections. It is limited then in what products the browser has viewed on its site. Getting the browser to enter a lot more information would be a gold mine for targeted advertising. If people enter their tastes and preferences, then Hunch can build a fairly accurate list of people who are likely to respond to specific ads, whether for restaurants that offers French food or clothes suitable for sports like rock climbing, according to the data entered.
So what if there were a Website that knew me well enough to automatically answer all my questions?
If people want to rely on an external tools to "handle" or take control of their life that is fine. But the truth behind this is that the current state of art in human language processing (with its trends such as sentiment analysis, question-answer system etc...) can only offer such functionality in a basic way. It is not a surprise that Hunch does not succeed in replacing human expertise when it comes to predicting intentions.
The problem with Hunch may be the whole point. They want to treat users like, well, users, i.e., consumers. Over time it will "learn" and become more sophisticated, so I don't doubt that the answers will improve. But it will give choices that are in the most-common-denominator vein. I am not sure what Hunch's business model is, but I would guess that there is money to be made on their recommendations.
It's Marketing 101. Individuality isn't really a desired trait in a consumer-oriented marketplace. And we, as consumers, feed into it. It's human nature to be more comfortable when we are in a group that has like beliefs and goals, and that works for mass-marketers. The more they can encourage us to be the same the better because then it is easier to sell to us. And in business, any business, that is the main goal.
I think we are being way to ambitious with everything that Hunch can do.If it really is an intelligent system which depends on crowd sourcing ;we need to give it more time to generate intelligent results.Maybe like 6months to an year from today(of active users entering into the system/pouring things into and out of the system).
Thats when we will know,whether or not Hunch is a sucess.
After all,Khosla Ventures is a deep pocketed party which is not going to be discouraged by a few setbacks here and there along the way to eventual sucess and domination.
I have to agree with you that there is nothing wrong in giving it a try and I was kind of like surprised to hear Nicole say that Hunch effort is a waste of time. History is already there to remind us of not putting limitations to what we can do in terms of innovations.
My only problem with Hunch is not that it can't do what it has been touted to do but rather I see it as an another subtle invasion on our privacy. By asking you a series of questions Hunch is attmepting to build a "taste profile" of you which they can use to help recommend certain decisions. I interpreted this to be one more attempt by Google to sniff off the remaining personal information we may have keep away from them.
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