{"id":647741,"date":"2013-03-20T10:10:39","date_gmt":"2013-03-20T14:10:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/?p=622228"},"modified":"2013-03-20T10:10:39","modified_gmt":"2013-03-20T14:10:39","slug":"without-human-input-augmentation-algorithms-alone-are-making-us-dumber","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/647741","title":{"rendered":"Without human input augmentation, algorithms alone are making us dumber"},"content":{"rendered":"

Are computer algorithms making you dumber? Yes, says Eric Berlow, founder of Vibrant Data Labs. Speaking at the GigaOM Structure: Data 2013<\/a> conference on Wednesday, Berlow offered several compelling examples of this phenomenon as well as an approach to augment algorithms with more human input.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s lots of content in the newspaper,\u201d Berlow noted. \u201cAfter viewing the most stories for a few weeks, I asked myself, where did all the news go?\u201d Think back to the Presidential debates, Barlow said. If you focused solely on topics provided by news algorithms, you\u2019d be reading nothing but stories about Big Bird and binders full of women.<\/p>\n

Amplifying crowd behavior is a start when it comes to managing\u00a0societal\u00a0data but we need to flip the approach, Berlow said.\u00a0\u201dHow do we harness and amplify our preferences to solve the world\u2019s problems?\u201d<\/p>\n

To do this, we need to find crowd-sourcing solutions that aren\u2019t just the sum of parts, but are greater than the sum of parts. Photocity is a good example, according to Berlow. It takes user submitted 2D camera images and creates 3D images from them; a product that didn\u2019t exist until the crowd\u2019s data was assimilated.<\/p>\n

This leads to one of the biggest challenges of our time with data: The personal data problem, where you are both the customer and the product. How can we spark a new personal data economy?<\/p>\n

Through the WeTheData.org<\/a> project, Berlow offers a suggestion, finding how all of our personal data is interconnected. By gathering human input first on approximately 90 personal data challenges and mapping this complexity, the project determined that the top problems emerging are digital access, digital trust, data literacy, platform openness.<\/p>\n

This may sound obvious in retrospect, Berlow said, but \u201cso too was gravity after we discovered it. A human panel surfacing these four issues show that if we can solve these issues, many of the other 90 challenges will be improved as well. And now that the personal data economy problem is better defined, algorithms can be applied to focus on the biggest issues, not every single one.<\/p>\n

Check out the rest of our Structure:Data 2013 coverage here<\/a>, and a video embed of the session follows below:<\/p>\n