#35: Recommenders and Finding Online Content

Ian Bowie
Hello and welcome to AI Unfiltered with me Ian Bowie and our resident expert, Michael Stormbom. Where we will be talking about everything to do with AI in our modern digital society and what the future holds for all of us.

Ian Bowie
Yes, recommenders these these little things that push stuff at you. Well, in my personal experience with recommenders is they don’t they don’t recommend the right stuff. They basically don’t work. And it’s one of the reasons actually that we quit Netflix, for example, because we couldn’t find anything. And what it was pushing at us or recommending to us just wasn’t relevant.

Michael Stormbom
There’s just an explosion of information.

Ian Bowie
That’s a great question. How do you find something good to watch on Netflix? Because I mean, I haven’t found anything good to watch on Netflix very easily. It’s normally somebody said to me, oh, you know, this is a good film. You should watch it. It’s on Netflix or a series or whatever. But when I tried to do searches, I come up with crap.

Michael Stormbom
I just have a problem with finding something to watch and you end up just watching stuff you’ve already seen because, obviously at least you know what you’re getting, right. They used to have that competition where creators were like, recommendation system for them, for Netflix, but obviously there’s some work to be done.

Ian Bowie
And then if you think okay, I think Amazon use them as well. I think everybody uses them.

Michael Stormbom
They’re literally everywhere. If you go on, I don’t know, if you go on a new site, and you’re logged in it will try to recommend your content based on that and advertising is pushed to you based on your personal preferences.

Ian Bowie
I find them intrusive, annoying and irrelevant. Personally, Spotify was doing it when I when I had Spotify. Apple Music was doing it when I had Apple Music they just didn’t get it right.

Michael Stormbom
So let’s just do a quick explainer on how recommender systems work or should work at least. And there are two common approaches. One is collaborative filtering, where the system tries to generate recommendations for you based on what other users with a similar profile and a similar rating history have rated. The more content you have rated whether you’ve liked it or disliked it, the better the recommendations should get. And the second approach is content based filtering, where the recommendations are based on content which is similar to the content you have liked in the past and the preferences you have expressed. And frequently recommender systems use a hybrid approach where both methods, and other methods as well, are incorporated.

Ian Bowie
Yeah but how do you know you’re not being manipulated all the time by these so called recommender algorithms?

Michael Stormbom
We are, I mean, well, how do people find these episodes? The recommender algorithm that… or this podcast, there’s recommender algorithmthat pushed…

Ian Bowie
Some recommender algorithms are actually very good.

Michael Stormbom
Since you’re here listening it shows that the recommender algorithm is understood what an intelligent, righteous person that you are that.

Ian Bowie
Indeed, well done. Great Taste. Yes. Congratulations. Slap yourself on the back. Yes.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah. Insert applause effects here.

Ian Bowie
Yeah. Anyway. Well, actually, YouTube, YouTube is a good example. I mean, I there’s a few things I watch on YouTube, not very much, but it keeps pushing stuff at me, which to be quite honest with you doesn’t seem to be related to what I’ve been watching anyway. It’s really weird. I mean, I’ve watched two things, which I really shouldn’t admit to even watching but what does it.. Beard meets food is once about a guy who eats…

Michael Stormbom
That’s the story of my life.

Ian Bowie
… the menu that’s right, eats the menu. And then the other one, which I really like is Rate my Takeaway. But then, if you think if you’re going to recommend something to me, you would have thought it will be food related. But it often isn’t. It’s all kinds of other crap that just gets pushed at me, which I’m not interested in at all.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, I think in that sense, YouTube works okay. Like if I’ve been listening to some music there. So, for example, those DJ sets, which are one hour, two hour, then it can push like reasonable, Hey, do you wanna listen? To this next? But of course, again, I don’t know what I’m missing in terms of other content like be something super awesome just for me that it has never been pushed to me because of X billions of minutes video on there.

Ian Bowie
He probably wouldn’t have ever found that anyway.

Michael Stormbom
well, no, that’s the thing. So how about how many hidden gems are there? there on YouTube?

Ian Bowie
I would imagine a lot actually. Yeah. Everywhere. Yeah. on Spotify, on Apple Music, on YouTube. And all the other programs. Yeah.

Michael Stormbom
On Spotify, there’s my music and no one listens to it. So despite my repeated attempts to mention it on the podcast. No, but I mean exactly that. Like, how do you find it? Because everyone has their music on Spotify.

Ian Bowie
It’s the same with literature. Yes. How do you find a good book these days?

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, and I think, because there are so many self published authors, you can.

Ian Bowie
Oh, absolutely. Kindle. Yeah, I mean, it’s good. I’m not I’m not against Kindle at all. You know, I think it’s fantastic that it’s, it’s allowed people to publish their work. The part of the problem with it, of course, is there’s everybody where it’s not just that there’s so much stuff, but it’s the fact that you know, everybody who thinks that they know how to write a book, writes a book. And if you start reading it, you realize what actually you can’t write, sorry, it’s just a load of crap.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah. And you can read about in my upcoming book….

Ian Bowie
How to avoid the… jealousy is a dreadful thing. Yes, yes. Green eyed monster again. Yeah. No, but it’s true. I mean, you know, it’s luck course, some people break through. But the vast majority don’t.

Michael Stormbom
I mean, if we consider the literally qualities of the Twilight series.

Ian Bowie
Which I know nothing about, but yeah,

Michael Stormbom
well, I will admit that I have not read the books.

Ian Bowie
My daughter’s read all of those.

Michael Stormbom
But I understand that they are quite bad, right. Popular but bad. But coming back to movie recommendations. Yeah.

Ian Bowie
The trouble is let’s say for example, that you know, I like thrillers, I like gangster films, I like action thrillers. And the problem is that there are very few quality films of those genres that are made. Nowadays. They just seem to push out rubbish, with very, very weak storylines at a phenomenal rate, stick it all on Netflix, and hope that people watch it or they create franchises. With each new episode, worse than the last. You know, the Fast and the Furious is a perfect example. What they did to Starwars again, I mean, in my opinion, they’re completely destroyed the story of Star Wars, with their greed and need to make more money.

Michael Stormbom
Unless Disney would like to sponsor the show, in which case is of course, the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Ian Bowie
I take my words back immediately.

Michael Stormbom
That’s exactly the thing with all these streaming service. They put so much emphasis that we have these many 1000s of hours of content, but maybe it doesn’t state that we have this many hours of quality, content.

Ian Bowie
Quality content Yeah, no, but I wish they would stick to quality. I mean, Netflix has done a few good things. I mean, the Crown was good.

Michael Stormbom
But I think the other thing is that now it’s also also the streaming world is so fractured and all of these different services there’s Netflix and HBO Max and Disney+ and Paramount+

Ian Bowie
Apple TV and.

Michael Stormbom
Amazon has their own and so forth. So I mean there yeah, there’s just so many of them as well. Yeah.

Ian Bowie
So it’s competition is ramping up.

Michael Stormbom
Competition is ramping up and it’s just really, really, fractured.

Ian Bowie
Do you think we’re gonna see a fallout?

Michael Stormbom
I’m sure there will be casualties of the streaming war.

Ian Bowie
I think actually, that’s a challenge with these online streaming services that obviously they need subscribers paying so that they can then fund content. When they sign up new people they need to have enough engaging content to keep them

Michael Stormbom
They want to avoid the churn for sure. There’s something that not really quite recommended business model because it tends to be on the assumption that there’s this infinite growth of subscribers, which is obviously physically impossible. Even in the best of circumstances.

Ian Bowie
Because the big boys I mean that people like Apple are gonna survive because I mean, they’re so huge. You know, Apple Music.

Michael Stormbom
They’re surely using that streaming service to drive people to their other products. Absolutely. It can be a loss leader for them for sure.

Ian Bowie
What about YouTube? Is that is that profitable? They are profitable. Yeah, yeah. Just wonder if they’re making money. Yeah,

Michael Stormbom
The other premium one is ad-supported

Ian Bowie
Yeah, the premium one is the one that you can pay for and then you don’t get any advertisement. A ridiculous concept, isn’t it? Not to get adverts?

Michael Stormbom
Well, isn’t that the same way with all of these. You pay for?

Ian Bowie
Yeah, but I mean, but they also they ultimately, you know, by having that business model, they are admitting adverts are annoying.

Michael Stormbom
Well, yes. And that’s built in to the whole..

Ian Bowie
I mean, actually there are certain adverts I find so irritating that I actually avoid buying that product. It might even be a good product, but the advert is so irritating, that I refuse to buy it.

Michael Stormbom
And you get also the same advertisement over and over and over again.

Ian Bowie
Repetitive irritating nonsense. I remember lots of slogans when I was a kid. Yeah, beans means Heinz, a Mars a day helps you work, rest and play, you know, those kinds of things that they’ve stuck with me. Well, I suppose the Mars company know when when they invented the Mars a day, but I can still remember that and I’m 57. So it was obviously a good job, gentleman.

Michael Stormbom
Did you buy a lot of Mars bars?

Ian Bowie
Yeah, I did. I actually, I actually do like Mars bars. But no, I think I am now an advert avoider as much as possible.

Michael Stormbom
Going off on a tangent, but if you’re playing these mobile games, which I play too much of. But in those, they want you to pay stuff, of course, but there’s a lot of advertising there, but then it’s advertisement for other mobile games. So sort of, I don’t know, who makes any money on this setup. So it’s just mutual advertising.

Ian Bowie
Advertising each other.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, so got one mobile game I noticed an advertisement for another mobile game and okay, then you download that one and then there’s advertising for a third.

Ian Bowie
And these are all free.

Michael Stormbom
These are all you know, free to play, okay. But I’m sure they’re doing all sorts of horrible things with my data in the background, but

Ian Bowie
Right, so this is a business model. They give you something for free so that they can collect your data, which they then go on to sell..

Michael Stormbom
If it’s free. You’re the product as the expression goes, yes. Yeah, well, same with social media.

Ian Bowie
I don’t do do social media.

Michael Stormbom
But it’s the same idea there. You’re the product. Yeah,

Ian Bowie
Yes. Yeah. No your information, something that they can then sell. That’s the valuable thing that is when you tick that tiny little box that gave you access to this wonderful world of nothingness. There was a little thing that says we can do what we want.

Michael Stormbom
The wonderful world of vacuousness. Yeah, that’s really…

Ian Bowie
My opinion, a vacuum, but…

Michael Stormbom
I mean, music recommendations and finding new music.

Ian Bowie
I subscribe at the moment, I used to subscribe to Spotify. You know, of course, very easy to find anything that you know, you know if you know I mean, for example, I was you know, checking out Foo Fighters, and listening to some Foo Fighter music. They’ve never really been on my music radar. It was just a name. So I started listening to them I think for the first time ever today, but it was easy to find them because I you just type in Foo Fighters. In fact, you type foo and suddenly fighters comes up. But if I want to find something new, something that you know, I’ve never listened to before. But I don’t have a specific name. It’s very difficult, actually.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, I think that’s where I find the sort of like the recommendation doesn’t quite know work for me, either. It recommend me stuff that I already know which is fine. But for example, like a year back I started listening to, you know, 80s New Wave, yeah. British music, which I haven’t really listen to

Ian Bowie
Duran Duran.

Michael Stormbom
And so forth. Yeah, it’s very difficult to sort of find, like artits, on whatever music service I’m using.

Ian Bowie
I’m wondering if I should even ask you what brought about an interest in British 80s new wave music.

Michael Stormbom
I don’t even remember.

Ian Bowie
Yeah, yeah. I mean, that was part of my my youth.

Michael Stormbom
I had some difficulty finding new music on Spotify. So I end up going on Wikipedia, researching new wave artists and writing my PhD thesis on the topic on it. No, but..

Ian Bowie
It’s true, isn’t it? I mean, you know, how do you find all this stuff? Yeah.

Michael Stormbom
So I think it requires a lot of effort and then and then exactly that, like finding stuff that you might be interested in, but don’t necessarily.

Ian Bowie
Yeah. Well, I’ll give you an example. Jethro Tull. Okay, so progressive English, folk music prog rock. You know, if you just typed in, that’s what you’re looking for progressive English, folk music, and then a little bit prog rock. Nothing that you think you might be interested in actually comes up? It looks absolutely hopeless.

Michael Stormbom
No, and then you need to need to know what folk rock or progressive rock whta it means in the first place. So

Ian Bowie
Yeah, exactly. And so no. Again, I think there’s a lot of work to be done in those areas. Have you ever come across that app called Shazam?

Michael Stormbom
Yes, I’ve had it installed at some point.

Ian Bowie
Yeah. So I mean, how does that work?

Michael Stormbom
How does that work? Yeah, well, you know what it does?

Ian Bowie
I know what it does. Yeah, I’ve got it. I use it. You know, I mean, you hear a song, and then you turn on Shazam. And then you know, within within, sort of, you know, three sentences or less, it tells you exactly what the song is and who’s singing it. I mean, it’s very cool.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah. Well, I mean, just compares, compares what it’s hearing to its large database there.

Ian Bowie
Again, I like stuff like that. It’s a toy, but it’s…

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, it’s handy for like you’re in a cafe and you hear a song that sounds cool, but I don’t know what song it is. And of course, it’s nice to be able to look it up.

Ian Bowie
I actually don’t know how you could ever invent an algorithm recommender. That wouldn’t annoy me. Yeah, I hate advertising. Full stop. I used to have an advertising agency, believe it or not, but, you know, television advertising, it’s banal.

Michael Stormbom
No, but I think when it comes to the recommendation systems, it’s partially based on what content you’ve been watching, based on content they know other people with similar profiles have liked and so forth, but I think it’s probably just not quite enough to get into the human psyche and learn preferences because that’s surface level. It’s a surface level thing that and that just not enough to get through.

Ian Bowie
And actually part of the problem is you know, sometimes I just look at stuff because I want to look at stuff. I actually interested in it really. I just want to know a little bit more about it. Yeah. Not going to buy it or use it. Or go there. I’m just interested.

Michael Stormbom
I don’t even remember the term for it. But it’s a specific term. When you have gone on, like an ecommerce website, and you looked at something you might even have gotten so far, you’re putting it into the into the laundry basket I was about to say… no but shopping cart. Yeah. Welcome to the word salad episode.

Michael Stormbom
Blooper Yes. Something into the shopping cart. Yes. Yeah. And then you for whatever reason you back out there.

Ian Bowie
You empty your basket.

Michael Stormbom
Yes. And then you start getting advertisments and we’re like, Hey, do you want buy this, do you want to buy this? I mean, it has a term…

Ian Bowie
Annoying. Irritating.

Michael Stormbom
That’s a synonym yes. Yeah, but the retargeting was to term. An annoying thing happened to me when, like I bought a CD. Yes, people I still buy CDs. But if it’s a band I like I usually buy like a physical copy. Yeah, yeah, no, but then I get advertisements for the exact same CD that I just bought. Like I say, I mean

Ian Bowie
From a different supplier?

Michael Stormbom
No from the exact same place. Like why, did they just assume that they sent me a broken copy and I need to buy a new one. What’s going on?

Ian Bowie
You want to buy one for a friend?

Michael Stormbom
Yeah this is so good I had to buy…

Ian Bowie
For all my friends, all three of them. Because actually, you know, it was quite interesting about the streaming service. Yeah. All right. You got recommendations every now and again, never relevant. But I found that all I’m doing is listening to the same bands and the same music that I’ve already got on CD.

Michael Stormbom
So you’re not expanding your repertoire?

Ian Bowie
No, no, actually, no, I haven’t really been no. I mean, I’ve tried a few you know, experiments and they’ve never worked out very well. And I’ve always gone back to the tried and tested stuff that I know I like. So in a way, I’ve been paying 10 euros a month to listen to music. I already own exactly, how dumb is that? You know? My goodness. So yeah, anyway, I cancelled it. I thought that actually the problem that I’ve got now is I don’t have a CD player. I’m gonna have to buy one. I’m gonna have a look tonight actually on the internet. Oh, God. Yes. On the internet. Guess what I’m going to be inundated with the next month. Yes. CD advertisements. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah. Do people even have those players anymore? Like CD players and DVD and Blu-Ray players?

Ian Bowie
We still have a Blu ray player. Yeah, at the cottage.

Michael Stormbom
I still have a PlayStation three which doubles as a player. Yeah, yeah. Except I haven’t turned it on in like two years.

Ian Bowie
Well, I still use it because we’ve got we’ve got all the Godfathers on DVD.

Michael Stormbom
I have thtat on Blu-Ray, maybe not the third one but the first two.

Ian Bowie
On DVD or Blu-Ray discs, anyway, discs. And I like to watch those. Every now and again.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah. So that’s our recommendation for today, The Godfather trilogy?

Ian Bowie
Yeah, that’s us making recommendations. This is human recommendations. Yes. Yeah. Based on our own personal preference. Yes. And that’s what I like. You see, that’s what I like. I would like, you know, somebody, Oh, you’re looking at a e-scooters? Yeah. Oh, well, I’ve got this… And I found it to be absolutely fantastic. Why don’t you try mine? That’s the kind of recommendation that I like. Yeah. personal recommendations based on personal experiences.

Michael Stormbom
I mean, they certainly carry more weight, don’t they.

Ian Bowie
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Stormbom
So our recommendation is to have other people recommend your stuff, rather. And that’s right.

Ian Bowie
Yeah, absolutely. You know, if you’re looking for something, ask a friend. Yeah. Yeah, somebody who knows you well.

Ian Bowie
You’ve been listening to me, Ian Bowie, and my colleague Michael Stormbom. On AI Unfiltered and for more episodes, please go to aiunfiltered.com. Thank you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai