Humans are boring, say machines

Behavioural psychologist Gavin Potter is an expert on idiosyncrasy. He helps computers understand what it means to be human. Potter works as a consultant to online dating companies, using massive data sets to help match prospective partners. Every time a user clicks on a potential date’s profile, all the relevant information leading to that click (hair, eye colour etc) is logged, helping the software to make predictions about the types of people we might be attracted to in the future.

While Potter is an expert on what makes us unique, his success in teaching computers to predict our behaviour comes from spotting the things that make us alike. For example, female daters click on profiles of men who are on average three years older than them. If you think that’s clichéd, consider that over 90 per cent of men seek women who are half their age plus seven. "People think they are unique," says Potter. "They say, ‘you can't possibly profile me’. The depressing thing is that you can actually do it pretty accurately."

The key to accurate, automated profiling lies in the size of the dataset. The bigger the dataset, the easier it is to iron out statistical anomalies. With evermore data, those clichés get easier and easier to find. It’s ironic that in our attempt to examine humanity through artificially intelligent means, all we ultimately reveal is our own robotic predictability.

Large-scale datasets are becoming increasingly available to the public. Take a look at behavioural economist Dan Ariely’s blog for an interesting take on password selection. Data from 100,000 Israeli user accounts, which were published following a cyber attack, show a depressing lack of what the author defines as necessary “randomness”.

The accounts, which were hacked from user registrations for Pizza Hut and an Israeli property website, revealed individuals’ usernames, email addresses and passwords. The most commonly chosen password was 123456 (584 users), with 1234 as the runner up (569) and 12345 in third (388). All in all, 1786 passwords (nearly 6 per cent) were comprised of consecutive increasing numerals.

“This means that one person in 18 didn’t muster the cognitive capacity to generate a password more intricate than 1234 and the like.”

Even worse,

“788 people (roughly 2.5 per cent, or one in forty people) chose a password identical to their username. [And] 417 people (1.32%) chose a password comprised of identical digits (e.g. 1111).”

The password analysis was completed by hand, but advances in computer processing power, and the addition of psychological insight to statistical analysis, have greatly improved our ability to automate the discovery of behavioural patterns from large datasets. It's unfortunate that the most enlightening discovery to date is our penchant for banality.

Pic credit: Tleilaxus

Zuckerberg's privacy trade-off

Facebook spends a disproportionate amount of time and money persuading us to leave our data in its capable hands. At least, its efforts appear disproportionate to the average user. In fact, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who lists "openness" as one of his interests on his own Facebook profile, is desperate to sell us his vision of the future, if only to prop up Facebook's ambitious $10bn valuation. That future precludes privacy.

To Zuckerberg and his shareholders, disclosure is the new discretion. To justify the business model, all of our likes and dislikes must be indexed and segmented at the behest of Facebook's eventual paymasters. Privacy must die if Facebook is to live.

The average user may not fully comprehend the company's goals, but that won't stop them feeling cheated once the targeting begins in earnest. As the Guardian points out:

"...the internet has proved resistant to overt commercialisation in the past. When Rupert Murdoch's News Corp bought MySpace for $580m in July 2005, the company used it to plug its own products and the site's hip audience of teenage music fans soon began to search for other online hangouts."

But moral outrage is generational, argues Web entrepreneur David Murray-Hundley. "We're very good in technology at saying, 'this generation doesn't get it, let's concentrate on the one behind'."

"It scares the crap out of most people," adds Murray-Hundley. "But look at the generation behind. They give up their data. An 18-20 year-old will give you the whole world."

That we are outraged while Facebook grows ever more powerful is no longer a paradox. It is simply a demographic shift. The appeal of Zuckerberg's trade-off, access for data, is a gamble on social media's popularity and eventual ubiquity. Don't bet against it.

A bad Budget for creativity

The biggest business loser in today's Budget is undoubtedly the video games industry, which lost the tax relief earmarked by Labour’s pre-election budget. It's a massive blow for a sector that annually contributes £1bn to UK GDP. Despite a vague promise of support from Ed Vaizey, the Chancellor this afternoon announced the removal of a tax break he regards as "poorly targeted".

Big mistake. The industry has been lobbying hard for tax relief in the face of tough competition from countries such as France and Canada, which enjoy government subsidies that allow developers to pay more for the best talent.

In the past, the UK has more than punched above its weight in the sector, rivaling games giants Japan and the US. But with more attractive packages available in English-speaking Canada and Australia, or closer to home in France, developers fear a "brain drain" of talented programmers. In a Budget purporting to inject life back into the private sector, Osborne has greatly underestimated the value of one of Britain's most valuable creative industries.

The Jabulani: predictably unpredictable

More on the Adidas Jabulani ball from Jon Naylor over at Half Volley. Adidas has produced the official World Cup ball ever since FIFA first sold the rights back in 1970. But as Naylor reminds us, this is not the first time the German sports company's technology has been criticised. In 2006, the "Teamgeist" was described by England goalkeeper Paul Robinson as "a water-polo ball", while 2002's "Fevernova" was compared by Italy's keeper Gianluigi Buffon to a "ridiculous kiddy's bouncing ball".

But if you study the statistics, says Naylor, it begins to look as if Adidas's perennial critics are merely getting their excuses in early. Since the Tricolore ball, which featured in the 1998 World Cup, "there have been progressively fewer goals scored in World Cup finals tournaments", not more.

2006 (Teamgeist): 147 goals, 2.30 per game

2002 (Fevernova): 161 goals, 2.56 per game

1998 (Tricolore): 171 goals, 2.7 per game

If the balls were "as difficult to handle as has been suggested, then surely goal avalanches would have been more regular in later tournaments," suggests Naylor, as opposed to increasingly rare?

Not necessarily. There are other factors at play, not least the attitude and skill level of the average World Cup striker. With an unpredictable ball at his feet, and the whole world watching his every move, many attacking players are opting to pass rather than shoot, or as we witnessed during England's opening match against the US, concentrating more on hitting the target than on scoring. True enough, we've seen the odd goalkeeping howler, but many more shots have ballooned over the crossbar.

So far, this World Cup has yielded the lowest number of goals in history. But there's another angle to consider. An unpredictable ball produces fewer goals, but what it also creates is more competitive matches. It may not be traditionally designed, but the Jabulani is at the very least a useful leveller, bringing parity even where attacking resources are unevenly distributed. Which is one of the reasons why games such as Brazil-North Korea are ending 2-1 rather than 5-0, and why Switzerland were at least in with a chance of toppling favourites Spain.

We might not get as many goals, but an unpredictable ball means a less predictable tournament. It's a reasonable trade-off.

BP and the crowdsource defence

With some suggesting BP could ultimately collapse under the weight of the multiple lawsuits headed its way, survival will depend a great deal on how the oil company is seen to handle the crisis. While the accident exposed flaws in the company's risk management, BP's response will test its PR team to the full.

The case for the prosecution is clear enough. Any future litigation will likely focus on the oil company's appalling safety record. But how much BP will owe in damages is unwritten. If the company can show contrition through the seriousness of its response, the courts will at least be inclined to focus more on facts than on the level of public hysteria.

BP chief executive Tony Haywood has already made the best PR decision available to him. Crowdsourcing a potential solution to the problem, a strategy that has already elicited over 30,000 ideas, is a public relations masterstroke on multiple levels. First, it shows that the oil company is ready to explore almost any route in its attempt to clean up the mess. It projects a willing, can-do attitude: an image the stricken company will need to hang on to.

Second, it demonstrates a degree of openness. At best, an inclination to collaborate can be used to combat the perception of secrecy—the potentially damaging impression that the public isn't being told the full story. Finally, it suggests, albeit subtly, that the company is in some way disconnected from the root cause of the problem. While BP can still score image points in outwardly claiming full responsibility, the fact that it has sought assistance from outside the company is a strategy of disassociation: it suggests that the leak was an occurrence so freakish that the only solution is as yet unknown.

The risk to BP's—and Haywood's—reputation is that ignorance is always a shaky foundation on which to mount a defence. If BP didn't fully assess the risks, it should never have commenced drilling in the first place. That said, the best outcome Haywood can hope for is leniency. Public perception remains crucial.

The puncture in Cameron’s inflated society

Even if David Cameron manages to bargain his way to the top of a coalition government, the Tories have floundered in their attempts to convince the British public that an unwieldy state should be replaced by community power. In a referendum for Cameron’s Big Society, the Tory leader has failed pretty convincingly. As Tim Montgomerie concludes on ConservativeHome:

"Unforgivably, the big society message favoured by the Tory head of strategy, Steve Hilton, was never poll-tested, and failed to cut through with most voters–and even frightened some."

Labour has dismissed the Big Society as an election gimmick, but there are signs in the private sector that the decentralisation of command is gaining currency. ROWE, which stands for Results Only Work Environment, is an attempt to rebalance the working environment, replacing so-called presenteeism with extreme flexibility. In lieu of command and control, employees get to dictate when and how much they work, the only stipulation being that they meet their individual targets. In a ROWE, it doesn’t matter what hours you work as long as the job gets done.

ROWE is a trade-off that rewards productivity with work-life autonomy. According to ROWE’s architects, former Best Buy employees Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson, eighty per cent of lost productivity can be attributed to presenteeism, an all too common attitude in which employees believe simply turning up to work is enough to warrant their monthly pay slips. ROWE decentralises workplace decision-making, so that employees set their own schedules. The goal is to empower through increased responsibility. Says Ressler:

"People at all levels stop doing any activity that is a waste of their time, the customer's time, or the company's money. This promotes a more engaged workforce motivated to not only produce something, but to produce something meaningful."

There are of course clear disadvantages to such a distinct redistribution of rights, not least of which is the fact that most organisations require more than a skeleton staff present during normal working hours to deal with that inconvenient thing known as the customer. It’s also argued that focusing too heavily on results dilutes team spirit, turning workers into selfish, unilateral robots—empowered, but inconsiderate to the needs of the company as a whole.

It’s a fine balance. Gain motivated, productive employees; risk creating disparate self-interest. Now consider the way local government decisions are made. Would Cameron’s Big Society have followed a similar path?

Cameron's ideological handicap

This is the best description I've come across of the ideological hurdle David Cameron must leap to win the election. DC is hamstrung by a blanket mistrust of free market capitalism and his party's historical bond with that system, writes Larry Elliott in the Guardian. You might think that the biggest loser after a recession of this size would be the government that presided over it. But the polls show that voters are still a little nervous of a return to small state politics.

"Cameron is in the diametrically opposite position to Margaret Thatcher in 1979: she was helped by the crisis of Keynesian social democracy in 1976; he is hampered by the crisis of laissez-faire. The events of the past three years have made it much harder to argue for a small state, market-knows-best approach to economic management, and the Conservatives have not yet found a plausible alternative.

"They have tried substituting the Big Society for the Big State, but it doesn't really address the fundamental weakness for the right: the ideological advantage is with those supporting more state intervention to tame the market."