Armies of the finest minds in computer science have dedicated themselves to improving the odds of making a sale. The Internet-era abundance of data and clever software has opened the door to tailored marketing, targeted advertising and personalized product recommendations.
Shake your head if you like, but that’s no small thing. Just look at the technology-driven shake-up in the advertising, media and retail industries.
This automated decision-making is designed to take the human out of the equation, but it is an all-too-human impulse to want someone looking over the result spewed out of the computer. Many data quants see marketing as a low-risk — and, yes, lucrative — petri dish in which to hone the tools of an emerging science. “What happens if my algorithm is wrong? Someone sees the wrong ad,” said Claudia Perlich, a data scientist who works for an ad-targeting start-up. “What’s the harm? It’s not a false positive for breast cancer.”
via If Algorithms Know All, How Much Should Humans Help? – NYTimes.com.
