We often hear about algorithms that can forecast our preferences, suggest products, or even detect health issues before they become apparent. How can a machine, which doesn’t have consciousness or feelings, accurately predict something so complex as human behavior? I’m fascinated by this intersection of technology and psychology and would love to hear from anyone who can shed light on the mysterious ways these algorithms seem to ‘know’ us. What’s happening behind the scenes that makes this possible?
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Imagine if you had to calculate all the physics and calculus required to figure out the correct angle, speed and position of your leg every time you needed to take a single step. You’d get no where.
Your brain however ignores all that fancy number stuff and just does it because it knows.
What you’re asking about is basically the reverse of this. Humans do a lot of stuff unconsciously just like how I described. We don’t NEED to know the information, ourselves just act on it at times. These algorithms give physical rhyme to our reason. Basically they can explain what we’re going to do because they figured out the stuff our body intrinsically knows.
Kind of how you don’t know how or why your body pumps blood. You can learn it but you as a human don’t just come out knowing that information. Your body just does it. The same way we learned that we could track stuff in your blood as it flows around your body, someone learned that we could track your selections at a store over a few trips and now they know what you are most likely to do.
This gets extrapolated out the more data you have. If the store buys data from another group to find out more about your habits and the habits of others you can start making educated guesses. Oh this woman is focusing more on nutrition and stopped buying alcohol and cigs? I betcha shes pregnant. ect
They don’t know, but they have a pretty good idea.
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