Week 3: Hybrid Human and Machine Intelligence: Pushing Boundaries

After reading Alexis Madrigal’s article, “How Netflix Reverse Engineered Hollywood,” it made me even more interested in the human work and technological software used to classify, or in this case, microtag information on the internet. I did not know what tagging or micotagging data on the Internet consisted of. The thing that interested me the most was that Netflix altered the system of tagging and microtagging by going deeper into the content of the movies featured on the website. In order to gain more content-based information and make the Netflix experience personal, Netflix’s Vice President of Product, Todd Yellin, and a Netflix crew used a mix of human and machine intelligence to create the Netflix Quantum Theory system of tagging movies and shows. The idea of combining both human and machine intelligence for a more powerful system reminds me of the book, The Singularity Is Near, written by computer scientist, futurist, and inventor, Ray Kurzweil.

Ray Kurzweil is a futurist, or in his terms, a Singulatarian. In his book he explains this theory of the Singularity. The Singularity is Near defines the term Singularity as “a future period during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life will be irreversibly transformed.” Kurzweil’s idea of the Singularity emphasizes the emergence of transhumanism through technological advancements in society, which will create such immense progress in technology that it will lead to the transcendence of humanity to a post-human race.

Obviously the Netflix Quantum Theory is not as extreme as Ray Kurzweil’s theory of the Singularity; however, Yellin’s system of combining human and machine intelligence is comparable to Kurzweil’s theory of transformation from a human intelligent society into a machine intelligent society. Kurzweil thinks in order to become the most intelligent and successful society that the human race must combine with machine technology and then later transform to a post-human machine intelligent society. Technology like Netflix’s Quantum Theory system is constantly improving and becoming more personable to the people using these technologic devices. Yes, Netflix is not capable of taking over the human race, but the Quantum Theory is learning to ‘outsmart’ consumers by categorizing information of consumer interests in a way that manipulates the consumers to continue to watch Netflix movies and shows. After gaining an understanding for Netflix’s Quantum Theory, Madrigal even said, “But if Netflix’s system didn’t already exist, most people would probably say that it couldn’t exist either.” Who knows what boundaries of technology, in this case, categorizing and tagging data will be broken? A tagging system like Netflix has just added to this whirlwind of out-of-the-box yet logical systems and can only improve from the systems that exist today.

Works cited:
Kurzweil, Ray. The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. New York: Penguin Group, 2005. Print.