3,365 research outputs found
How Algorithmic Confounding in Recommendation Systems Increases Homogeneity and Decreases Utility
Recommendation systems are ubiquitous and impact many domains; they have the
potential to influence product consumption, individuals' perceptions of the
world, and life-altering decisions. These systems are often evaluated or
trained with data from users already exposed to algorithmic recommendations;
this creates a pernicious feedback loop. Using simulations, we demonstrate how
using data confounded in this way homogenizes user behavior without increasing
utility
Predicting human preferences using the block structure of complex social networks
With ever-increasing available data, predicting individuals' preferences and
helping them locate the most relevant information has become a pressing need.
Understanding and predicting preferences is also important from a fundamental
point of view, as part of what has been called a "new" computational social
science. Here, we propose a novel approach based on stochastic block models,
which have been developed by sociologists as plausible models of complex
networks of social interactions. Our model is in the spirit of predicting
individuals' preferences based on the preferences of others but, rather than
fitting a particular model, we rely on a Bayesian approach that samples over
the ensemble of all possible models. We show that our approach is considerably
more accurate than leading recommender algorithms, with major relative
improvements between 38% and 99% over industry-level algorithms. Besides, our
approach sheds light on decision-making processes by identifying groups of
individuals that have consistently similar preferences, and enabling the
analysis of the characteristics of those groups
- …