Editorial: “Unmasking hidden persuaders is a hard sell“
I first realised I had a problem inside the department store. I was meant to be choosing a gift for my niece. My bored 2-year-old had begun pulling the items off the shelves, in a desperate bid for entertainment. That was because I had been standing still, just staring at a display of colourful children’s toys, for well over 10 minutes.
The problem was that I had left my smartphone at home. Usually when I can’t make a decision, I whip out my phone and ask Google or one of my apps for advice or reviews. Without it, I was paralysed by choice.
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I now continually turn to apps and websites for recommendations about what to buy, what to eat and where to go. Life’s big decisions remain my own, but many of my everyday choices are essentially delegated. As well as regularly turning to search engines for advice, I use apps like MapMyRun to set a jogging route, for instance, and iTunes to select the music to listen to while I run. I let Google News tell me what stories I should read, and have Netflix pick which movies to watch.
I’m not alone. For example, more than one-third of on their smartphones for guidance just before they make a buying decision. Smartphones and tablets have become more than simple communication devices: they are very often the source of the information we use to decide how to navigate the world.
Although there is nothing wrong with being constantly plugged in and informed, this habit inevitably means that our everyday decisions are being subtly influenced without us even realising. You might not have elected to cede control of your choices, but if you spend any time online, it is almost certain that you are unwittingly doing so already. And in the next few years, we could hand over even more autonomy. Our portable devices are poised to become intelligent “personal assistants†– perhaps even capable of acting independently on our behalf in work, entertainment and relationships.
So what are the implications of delegating everyday choices? If we are not doing the deciding, who or what is? And should we be concerned, or might removing some choice from our lives actually make us happier?
We all have free will, and it would be ridiculous to argue that turning to an iPhone for advice could take that away. Still, we can only make informed choices on the basis of the information available. A lot of the time, that information comes from a product review usually written by a person. But increasingly, much of the information and recommendations we get from the internet have already been filtered and personalised by “recommender†algorithms. These bits of computer code use our previous preferences, and those of people with similar tastes, to present a view of the world that is different to that of our neighbour’s.
For example, websites like Amazon and Netflix continually recommend items targeted at you, and many smartphone apps now do the same. One app, called , uses your past choices to suggest nearby restaurants you’d like, and is dubbed “your personal robotâ€. These algorithms are already highly influential. Around 60 per cent of all movies rented from Netflix are based on the recommendations of the site’s algorithm, says the company.
Since 2009, Google has worked in a similar way, personalising the results provided by its web searches for each individual, largely based on their past activity using the search engine. Social network feeds are also personalised: the status updates and photos that appear on your Facebook news feed have been edited by an algorithm based on factors such as how it rates the strength of your friendships (see “Got friendly world syndrome?â€).
By carrying our tastes, previous choices and background around with us as we visit each corner of the internet, we are enabling companies to make decisions on our behalf about what we see when we are there – which in turn will influence our subsequent choices.
For an illustration of how, consider this example from Eli Pariser, author of the 2011 book The Filter Bubble. Imagine two people entering the search term “BP†immediately after the company’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill. One, a liberal, is presented with news stories about the environmental effect of the spill, while the other is given stock tips about the company. If they are both investors trying to decide whether to buy BP shares, they could come to quite different conclusions.
Even the adverts we see online are personalised, which can affect the range of choices we think are available. As Pariser points out in The Filter Bubble: “Students who go to Ivy League colleges see targeted advertisements for jobs that students at state schools are never even aware of.â€
Most of the time all this personalisation is helpful – especially for battling the modern malady of information overload. Take Netflix. “Its users have some version of the entire library of film in front of them,†says who has raised concerns about the influence of algorithms. “How are they supposed to make a decision about that?â€
But at the same time, algorithms are far from perfect at forecasting complex human desires, Slavin says. They break down our tastes and behaviour into categories they can understand – so that because I like Jane Austen novels, I am also likely to watch Downton Abbey, for instance. In reality, we are much less predictable.
Some people might, like me, find it unsettling that all this personalisation is happening without fanfare. Few of us are even aware that it is going on, says Dean Eckles at Stanford University in California, who studies the social influence of interactive technologies. “It is basically invisible to people,†he says.
So how concerned should we be? To tackle that question, we need to look at where this technology trend is headed.
After all, the current wave of personalisation is just the beginning, says Justin Donaldson, president of machine-learning company , based in Corvallis, Oregon. He and his colleagues argue that we are on the verge of a new wave of systems that can act directly on our behalf, instead of just suggesting options .
The increasing use of recommender systems on smartphones is giving them access to a rich source of data about our everyday lives. My smartphone, for example, knows not only what search terms I enter into Google and who my friends are on Facebook, but what my GPS coordinates are at any given moment. It also has access to my calendar, emails and daily notifications.
Donaldson predicts that, using this information, smartphones will soon be able to act like personal assistants, if not old-fashioned butlers. “Butlers knew of all of the quirks, tastes and vices of their employers,†he says. “Their task was to promote, suggest or arrange the most appropriate attire, meal or social function.â€
“Smartphones could become like butlers, knowing all our quirks, tastes and vices, and acting upon themâ€
For a hint of what is to come, says Donaldson, look at Siri on the latest iteration of the iPhone. Billed as a “virtual assistantâ€, Siri is equipped with the artificial intelligence to understand voice commands such as “find me an Italian restaurantâ€, and can use the web or apps to search for nearby eateries. According to Apple, Siri also learns about you over time, using information from your calendar, contacts list, music library and reminders to better understand what you mean. It is not impossible that future versions of programs like Siri could use this information to arrange a night out with friends, plan a business meeting or book a hotel for you.
Soon, your smartphone could even make recommendations and choices based on how you are feeling. Hyun-Jun Kim and Young Sang Choi of the in Yongin, South Korea, are developing a system that uses information about a user’s emotional state to shape its recommendations for music or products to fit their mood. Called EmoSens, it uses the phone’s sensors to measure signals such as shaking, walking pace and speed of tapping on the screen. It can then conclude that a person is more agitated than usual, for example, and so tailor its recommendations accordingly. For example, if you are looking to book a restaurant, it might propose comfort food if you are in a bad mood. The pair at a conference on recommender systems in Chicago last October.
Do we want algorithms studying our behaviour and acting on our behalf in this way? How can we be sure that a virtual assistant won’t store our information and sell it to marketing companies, for example, or subtly favour particular brands?
There will always be companies taking advantage of any technology when personal details about our lives are involved. Some people may not like that, but the benefits should outweigh the risks, argues Donaldson. And just because recommender systems today tend to work on behalf of companies that want to sell something, that doesn’t mean the next generation would do the same, he says.
In principle, tomorrow’s virtual assistants could work solely in our best interests, not a company’s. So, for example, it might intervene to stop you buying a novel from Amazon, by suggesting you borrow it from a Facebook friend who it knows bought it last month. “These things can genuinely improve our quality of life,†says Donaldson. “Our generation just needs to understand where the boundaries are, and how we can protect ourselves.â€
Culture shaper
Still, there are wider implications to consider if we collectively delegate more and more of our decision-making to algorithms. The recommender systems used to personalise our entertainment choices could even start to shape culture itself.
It is not impossible that plays and films would make more money if their authors wrote them to satisfy an algorithm’s idea of what people with particular tastes like to watch. If that sounds unlikely, consider that many online journalists already write news and headlines in a style that ensures Google’s algorithms place their stories higher in the search results. They are not just writing for their human readers; they are writing for algorithms too.
Another issue also gives pause: if we all have the world personalised for us, what experiences do we end up missing out on? We are often rewarded for spontaneous choices. Think of all the movies you have enjoyed because you took a risk, or meals you liked at restaurants you simply stumbled upon. It would be a shame if the world lost some of its serendipity.
On the other hand, we may all end up happier if we had fewer decisions to make each day. Psychologists know that our ability to make good decisions deteriorates after an extended period of making choices – even little ones like what products to buy in a supermarket – in what is called “decision fatigueâ€. And various studies have shown that people with restricted choice – or none at all – often feel happier with a given outcome than those with more freedom ().
In one experiment by Simona Botti of the London Business School and Sheena Iyengar of Columbia University in New York, participants were presented with a meal chosen by a friend or given the freedom to choose their own dish. Often the meal would turn out to be unappetising, but the people who had chosen it themselves enjoyed it much less than those who had it recommended by the friend ().
As someone who hates making decisions, this makes sense to me. Put an intelligent personal assistant in a smartphone, and I would consider buying it. But I would certainly feel better about algorithms acting on my behalf if I had greater control and awareness of when they were guiding my choices. Anthony Jameson, head of the Choosability Engineering research group at the in Saarbrücken, argues that software developers should make their recommender systems more transparent. For example, existing search engines and recommender systems could easily display a “sliderâ€, from which users could choose how varied they want their recommendations to be, he says.
In the meantime, though, I have resolved to think much more carefully before turning to an algorithm to suggest a product or activity. And that is perhaps one of the better-informed choices I have made this year – even if it does mean I spend more time staring blankly at shelves of toys in department stores.
Got friendly world syndrome?
In the 1970s, George Gerbner coined the term “mean world syndrome†to describe the way in which people who watch a lot of violent television shows tend to think the world is more unpleasant than it actually is.
Today, the design of social networking sites like Facebook may be having a similar, but opposite, effect. They seem to make the world seem altogether more fun than reality.
To prevent us becoming overwhelmed with status updates on Facebook, the newsfeed is filtered so that stories receiving more comments or “likes†are given priority. The result is that lively updates, such as holiday snaps or anecdotes from a drunken night out, tend to trump more general news, says Dean Eckles of Stanford University in California.
The aggregate effect of this is that it can make us feel as if everyone else is having a better, more interesting time than us, says Eckles. “What you’re not hearing about are the people who spent the night at home reading a book.†Eckles calls the effect .
In principle, this effect could influence our own behaviour and choices, by making us feel as if we should be getting out more, and spending more money to keep up with our friends, says Eckles. To support that idea, he points to research by Sharad Goel and Dan Goldstein at Yahoo! Research in New York suggesting that our friends’ buying behaviour, and in particular the amount they spend, can .
