6 algorithms that have triggered disaster
Algorithms are increasingly used to help humans in their decisions. A poorly programmed algorithm, or humans lacking critical thinking skills, are recurrent causes of algorithmic errors. These errors sometimes trigger users’ anger or incite them to hack them. This article analyzes 6 algorithmic errors that have had harmful consequences on humans. The 4th example is particularly serious because it impacted thousands of people and caused irreparable damage (suicides, separations, unjustified debts). Only for our subscribers: exclusive analyses and marketing advice Email address *...
This YouTuber has 50 million subscribers, and that’s not good news
For the end of the year 2020, MrBeast, YouTuber with 50 million subscribers, has put online a video that is symptomatic of the evils of our society. This video was truly disgusting to me because, in addition to being useless, it promotes the values that destroy our living together. And yet it has already garnered 30 million views. MrBeast offers us the distressing spectacle of our addictions and the values that motivate us. Who is MrBeast?...
![[Podcast] Teaching children to use digital technology](https://www.intotheminds.com/blog/app/uploads/child-computer-coding-240x240.jpg)
[Podcast] Teaching children to use digital technology
Nathalie Kuborn (We Are Coders), Gaëlle Girardeau (Cood) and Christophe Coquis (Geek Junior) talk to us about learning about computers, digital technology and the introduction to digital culture for children: the market, courses and advice. The market for teaching digital technology to children The emergence of a need The market for computer-based learning for children is emerging. For Gaëlle, this can be explained by the fact that we are all increasingly equipped in terms of digital...
![[Podcast] SpaceSense, satellite image processing start-up using AI](https://www.intotheminds.com/blog/app/uploads/spacesense-240x240.jpg)
[Podcast] SpaceSense, satellite image processing start-up using AI
SpaceSense is a recent French start-up offering a solution for processing satellite imagery using artificial intelligence. We learn more in this podcast with Sami Yacoubi, co-founder of SpaceSense. Discover this entrepreneurial adventure in this new podcast.Haut du formulaire Only for our subscribers: exclusive analyses and marketing advice Email address * Subscribe By signing up, you agree to our Terms of use and privacy policy. "I thought the blog was good. But the newsletter is even better!"...
![[Podcast] Optimising sales prices with Pricing HUB](https://www.intotheminds.com/blog/app/uploads/data-interest-240x240.jpg)
[Podcast] Optimising sales prices with Pricing HUB
Discover this entrepreneurial adventure in this new podcast. Only for our subscribers: exclusive analyses and marketing advice Email address * Subscribe By signing up, you agree to our Terms of use and privacy policy. "I thought the blog was good. But the newsletter is even better!" Esteban Hendrickx, art director Sommaire Chapter 1: your entrepreneurial experience in 3² point Chapter 2: The genesis of the business idea Chapter 3: Validation of the business idea Chapter 4:...
How to achieve better marketing and market research with Big Data
Technological progress today allows us to enjoy excellent living conditions. Control of space, control of reproduction, control of information are challenges that we have already accomplished. However, time control remains out of reach. Many human obsessions revolve around the power of this resource, offered to us at birth in a desperately finite quantity: time. Staying young, living old, perpetuating your memory, predicting the future are some of the forms that this obsession takes. This refusal of...
How to get Internet users to share more personal data?
What personal data are Internet users willing to share in exchange for better personalisation of the marketing offer? How to adapt your marketing strategy to get more data? This question is the subject of much debate at a time of the GDPR and the dawn of the entry into force of e-privacy. What data can a company still collect without fear that its customers will lose confidence? It is this tricky but crucial question that we...
Artificial intelligence: a new opponent of reference in the gaming world
Artificial intelligence, algorithms, are now an integral part of our daily lives. They play a role in various fields, which do not always have an obvious link with IT. Indeed, artificial intelligence (AI) is applied in many areas such as robotics, but also games, music, art, health, and many other domains. This article launches our brand-new series on the multiple facets of artificial intelligence by detailing its integration into our modern world. Today we begin with...
Media Fast Forward: conference on news and algorithms
Participating at conferences has the positive aspect that you force your capacity to be astonished, you confront new subjects and meet new people. The “Media Fast Forward” event organised on 14 December 2018 by the VRT (the Belgian Dutch-speaking public radio and television) is a striking melting pot of the best in innovation and research in the media sector. In addition to the many conferences that were organised in parallel from 10am to 4.30pm, there were...
AI revolution in media : BBC4 broadcasts program made by machine
On the 4th and 5th of September, a unique television experience took place in the United Kingdom on one of the BBC channels. It is on BBC4 that 2 exceptional evenings dedicated to artificial intelligence took place. In addition to the documentaries that allowed viewers to familiarise themselves with this complex theme, these two evenings were also an opportunity to experiment with the broadcasting of a programme entirely designed by an algorithm. It is precisely this...
BMMA : Keynote on the use of artificial intelligence in the media industry
At the invitation of the Belgian Management and Marketing Association (BMMA), I was delighted to be able to give a keynote on 15/11/2018 about the applications of artificial intelligence in the media sector. This presentation, which was illustrated with several real use cases from several European countries, was based on the market research that we have been carrying out since 2016 and on the proprietary information that we have been collecting for many years. If you...
We need to rethink how to study filter bubbles: here’s why
At the RecSys conference, the last part of my keynote was dedicated to nuancing the myth of filter bubbles and to show the limitations of current academic research and propose a new research framework. Research on filter bubbles has been technology-driven As I explained in my talk, research on filter bubbles has been mainly technology-driven and deterministic. Escaping the “bubble” has been assessed on the basis of clics from one category of content to the other....
Marketing research: the influence of privacy perception on customer loyalty
What does privacy mean in the age of robots, articifial intelligence and omnipresent algorithms? How do users percive privacy and how is it traded off against other benefits (personalization for instance)? Those are still emerging questions that a team of marketing researchers from the University of Toulouse (France) tried to answer at the 2018 EMAC conference that was helf in Glasgow. More specifically the study looked at the factors influencing the “sharing frequency” as a dependent...
filter bubbles: scientific evidence that algorithms aren’t to be blamed
What can you discover about filter bubbles when you analyse datasets with billions of tweets over a 8-year period ? Some very interesting results for sure. In particular that you don’t need algorithms to stay within an echo chamber and that bridging echo chambers comes at a price. This contributes to the ongoing discussion on the very existence of algorithmic filter bubbles. Introduction Garimella et al. (2018) studied political exchanges on twitter Their research differs from...
Cambridge Analytica closes but it’s only the tip of the iceberg
Mn May 2nd 2018 Cambridge Analytica announced it was filling for insolvency in the UK and bankruptcy in the US. In its press release the company declared : the siege of media coverage has driven away virtually all of the Company’s customers and suppliers. As a result, it has been determined that it is no longer viable to continue operating the business, which left Cambridge Analytica with no realistic alternative to placing the Company into administration. While...
Face recognition algorithms are biases towards black people and women
Joy Buolamwini, a MIT PhD candidate, presented her research at the inaugural FAT Conference in New-York. She had previously given a TED talk and been invited to the White House to present her work on algorithmic fairness. In the paper she presented at the FAT conference Joy showed how face recognition algorithms can be biased towards certain segment of the population and in fact lead to discrimination. Here are the 2 main contributions of this...
Artificial intelligence won’t replace you if you are creative: here’s why
“Artificial intelligence will replace us”; “millions of jobs are threatened by artificial intelligence”. I’m sure you all have read those catastrophist headlines. And it’s probably true that the job market will be disrupted on the long run. But I don’t think it’s likely to happen overnight. Most importantly I think some parts of the job market will be entirely safe; those jobs for which creativity is essential are likely to be safe and, most importantly, will...
Dynamic pricing in retail : can smart shelves lead to discrimination?
We presented in another article a great innovation presented at the NRF2018 retail show this year : smart shelves. Those smart shelves are especially interesting because of their built-in cameras to detect customers’ faces and interact accordingly with them. As the website of AWM explains, the embarked face recognition algorithms are able to detect demographic criteria like gender, ethnicity and age (see picture below, source : AWM website, captured on 18 Jan 2018). The LED displays...
Give me my time back ! I’m a digital slave.
It happens again and again and there is nothing I can do. The temptation is too big. I can’t resist staring at my screen and losing my time watching and doing things that I don’t really want to do. Rather than doing things that would enrich me, I can’t resist the temptation of browsing my Facebook feed, looking at the latest notifications, watching poor videos on YouTube. Social medias are my grave. I want to get...
Media convergence : 2-day workshop in Mainz (Germany)
I had the pleasure to be invited by the University of Mainz (Germany) to give a talk on the use of recommender systems in the broadcasting industry. The 2-day conference started on 16 October at the Chancellery of Rheinland-Pfalz in Mainz, and continued on 17 October at the ZDF headquarters. The conference was entitled “Better stream or watch TV” and was composed of 4 sessions : how does the market change ? how does the usage...
Workshop on fairness and ethics in recommendation systems
On the last day of the RecSys 2017 conference I was fortunate enough to be in the organizing committee of the workshop on fairness, accountability and transparency in recommendation systems (F.A.T.REC). This workshop was the first of its kind within the RecSys community ; the conference is indeed usually very much tech-oriented and Joe Konstan, who chaired the very first ACM Recsys conference, indicated in a plenary session that he wanted more space to be dedicated...
![[Podcast] Teaching children to use digital technology](https://www.intotheminds.com/blog/app/uploads/child-computer-coding-60x60.jpg)
![[Podcast] SpaceSense, satellite image processing start-up using AI](https://www.intotheminds.com/blog/app/uploads/spacesense-60x60.jpg)
![[Podcast] Optimising sales prices with Pricing HUB](https://www.intotheminds.com/blog/app/uploads/data-interest-60x60.jpg)
