Im a neurotic. IBM told me so. Im a late Wednesday afternoon tweeter. Its not a characteristic Id necessarily include on any of my dating app profiles, but it accurately sums up my online behavior nonetheless. Im also a tremendous neurotic (which should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me well) who embraces self-expression, challenges and change. Im that personality pie chart you see up above. Im an open book, or at least my Twitter profile is to IBM. Michelle Zhou greeted me with that handy personality breakdown when we met at IBM Researchs Almaden lab in San Jose, California; shed taken the liberty of finding out my Twitter handle beforehand and compiling the results. Zhous the lead researcher for a platform called System U that analyzes the big data generated from an individuals socially networked life -- be that Facebook, Twitter, emails or even chats -- to determine their values, beliefs and personality traits. If youre not a fan of labels, then you wont like Zhous work; after all, it did expose me for the impulsive, OCD ice queen that I am. But then again, its not Zhou thats placing you into neatly labeled boxes; its your own words that are responsible. If youre not a fan of labels, then you wont like Zhous work; after all, it did expose me for the impulsive, OCD ice queen that I am. System U is based off of the study of psycholinguistics, a branch of cognitive science that examines how we acquire, use and effectively interpret language. With this as a foundation, Zhous platform focuses on defining individuals according to three main areas of psychological profiling: the Big Five personality traits (i.e., openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism); basic human needs; and values. It even deconstructs our online social habits, hence the revelation that I tweet heavily during lunch on hump day. Its not unlike the internal testing major social networks do with their own masses of user data, except IBMs platform aims to mine all of that data to build a cohesive psychological profile. Zhous big data cruncher isnt infallible -- I certainly take umbrage with the notion that Im an angry fellow -- but it is statistically significant. In fact, Zhous team conducted studies to prove the efficacy of System U and found that its results are over 80 percent accurate. That mark of scientific worthiness means the platforms also good enough for IBM to license it as a business tool. Zhou said IBMs already been working with several unnamed enterprise clients to apply System U and derive insights into those companies respective customer bases. Participation, Zhou stressed is, of course, opt-in, so individuals wont have to worry about being unwitting pawns in a big business/big data profiling scheme. As Zhou explained, This is a very new technology. And its one we better get used to. Watch as Zhou details how the words we use online can be used to paint an accurate portrait of who we really are on the inside. [Image credit: IBM Research] Filed under: Science Comments ift.tt/1AV1YkJ
Posted on: Fri, 19 Sep 2014 15:35:29 +0000
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