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Netflix’s Secret Special Algorithm Is a Human

newyorker.com

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Re: Netflix’s Secret Special Algorithm Is a Human

#51

Post by roasm »

otakucode wrote: post #42

It always amazes me how the people in the content creation industries keep their jobs. Even though comprehensive studies have shown that the public responds randomly to entertainment products, they still skate by claiming to 'know what the public wants.' Analysis of the decisions of past executives at movie companies showed that executives who were said to be "on a hot streak" were mostly benefitting from the results…

Large movie production houses won't die in the near future, because predicting a financial winner isn't as hard as you make it sound. We currently have a movie economy that is driving the big producers to make big budget comic book sequels that do well internationally (generally based on the universal appeal of liking suspense and action). They've boxed themselves into a very profitable corner of funding high budget movies that independent producers can't fund and then profiting internationally. They make a movie for $200M then make $300M+ in sales.

I do agree that more independent (but still highly funded) producers are rolling dice, then manufacturing winners with their marketing power.

Re: Netflix’s Secret Special Algorithm Is a Human

#52

Post by tessierashpool »

boomzilla wrote: post #19
JeremyMorgan wrote: post #6

Hollywood Video's corporate office had a guy, one guy whose job it was to just watch movies. He'd watch them, make sure it was categorized properly, then create associations with other movies that "you might like" if you like this movie, and vice versa. All kept in a spreadsheet that we later plugged in. We also thought there should be an algorithm, but he was pretty dang good at what he did.

It's simple ROI. There is not that many movies this is a task that one doesn't need to scale with computers. Hiring a guy is likely much cheaper than investing on the software. Plus I am sure there are plenty of people who would like to watch movies for their day jobs. On the other hand, I am pretty sure there is at least some degree of automated video classification at Youtube.

    I am pretty sure there is at least some
    degree of automated video classification
    at Youtube.
there's definitely collaborative filtering.

Re: Netflix’s Secret Special Algorithm Is a Human

#53

Post by abruzzi »

rurban wrote: post #41

I also rather trust the algorithm to see what is a good movie and what is not. In my case the collected ratings of the experts, not the users. Current example: http://cannes-rurban.rhcloud.com/Sundance2015 There are some outliers, typical "festival hits", which only relate to festival specialists, but they are easily detectable, with a "10%" human bullshit detector. Like last years Godard at Cannes, 2012 Leos Carax,…

The problem I've found is the algorithms for detecting taste seem to struggle greatly the further ones taste deviates from the norm. I find Netflix's recommendations to be fundamentally useless and is always reccomending things in which I have zero interest. But I've also found Rotten Tomatoes to be borderline useless as well (the second worst film I've seen in the last decade--Snowpiercer--has a very high RT score...go figure.)

Re: Netflix’s Secret Special Algorithm Is a Human

#54

Post by antoncohen »

JeremyMorgan wrote: post #6

Hollywood Video's corporate office had a guy, one guy whose job it was to just watch movies. He'd watch them, make sure it was categorized properly, then create associations with other movies that "you might like" if you like this movie, and vice versa. All kept in a spreadsheet that we later plugged in. We also thought there should be an algorithm, but he was pretty dang good at what he did.

That is basically what Netflix does. They have teams of people trained to watch movies and tag them with lots of metadata -- really precise metadata. Then the algorithms take over and do the actual recommendation.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/01/how-ne...

Re: Netflix’s Secret Special Algorithm Is a Human

#55

Post by keypusher »

abruzzi wrote: post #53
rurban wrote: post #41

I also rather trust the algorithm to see what is a good movie and what is not. In my case the collected ratings of the experts, not the users. Current example: http://cannes-rurban.rhcloud.com/Sundance2015 There are some outliers, typical "festival hits", which only relate to festival specialists, but they are easily detectable, with a "10%" human bullshit detector. Like last years Godard at Cannes, 2012 Leos Carax,…

The problem I've found is the algorithms for detecting taste seem to struggle greatly the further ones taste deviates from the norm. I find Netflix's recommendations to be fundamentally useless and is always reccomending things in which I have zero interest. But I've also found Rotten Tomatoes to be borderline useless as well (the second worst film I've seen in the last decade--Snowpiercer--has a very high RT score..…

Do you actually rate the things you watch on Netflix? Or go back and rate a bunch of popular movies you loved and hated? Because if you don't, you will just keep getting the same mainstream recommendations.

Re: Netflix’s Secret Special Algorithm Is a Human

#56

Post by thret »

72deluxe wrote: post #46
JeremyMorgan wrote: post #6

Hollywood Video's corporate office had a guy, one guy whose job it was to just watch movies. He'd watch them, make sure it was categorized properly, then create associations with other movies that "you might like" if you like this movie, and vice versa. All kept in a spreadsheet that we later plugged in. We also thought there should be an algorithm, but he was pretty dang good at what he did.

Very interesting. Did he enjoy it or did he get bored? Did he have to watch some horrific films? Did he feel like his brain was being polluted as more degenerate films come out? Did it affect his perception of reality? Just interested.

Only a few times have I watched a full three movies in a day, and I found it exhausting. I think having to watch movies all day every day would be much harder than it first sounds.

Re: Netflix’s Secret Special Algorithm Is a Human

#57

Post by 72deluxe »

thret wrote: post #56
72deluxe wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very interesting. Did he enjoy it or did he get bored? Did he have to watch some horrific films? Did he feel like his brain was being polluted as more degenerate films come out? Did it affect his perception of reality? Just interested.

Only a few times have I watched a full three movies in a day, and I found it exhausting. I think having to watch movies all day every day would be much harder than it first sounds.

Same here. Watching the Star Wars trilogy in one day was exhausting, and also perhaps a bit sad. Watching the entire 6 films would be killer.

Re: Netflix’s Secret Special Algorithm Is a Human

#58

Post by sireat »

ctdonath wrote: post #28

Drive such a thing thru Amazon Turk perhaps? Might just be the "killer app" for Turks: get paid to watch movies!

MTurk has already been used to classify and tag videos.

I spent a month as Turker (as an experiment) a few years ago.

The best paying HITs were provided by a porn company to classify and tag their videos. You were given a sequence of images from the video presumably to save bandwith.

I even debated scripting a helper tool which would take a few keystrokes (for example dvda) and generate a suitable description.

Re: Netflix’s Secret Special Algorithm Is a Human

#59

Post by cmdkeen »

72deluxe wrote: post #46
JeremyMorgan wrote: post #6

Hollywood Video's corporate office had a guy, one guy whose job it was to just watch movies. He'd watch them, make sure it was categorized properly, then create associations with other movies that "you might like" if you like this movie, and vice versa. All kept in a spreadsheet that we later plugged in. We also thought there should be an algorithm, but he was pretty dang good at what he did.

Very interesting. Did he enjoy it or did he get bored? Did he have to watch some horrific films? Did he feel like his brain was being polluted as more degenerate films come out? Did it affect his perception of reality? Just interested.

Spare a thought for the people at the BBFC in the UK who in addition to having to watch every feature film to rate it also have to watch all the pornography videos to rate and check for legality.

I attended a university debate once between a BBFC censor and a female porn director. Watching the two of them talking about "counting knuckles during a fisting scene" to check that the UK requirement that at least one knuckle is always visible was a truly bizarre experience. The BBFC man had the look of an individual who has stared into the heart of darkness for a little too long. He had some excellent stories though!

If anyone does organise debates, talks, conferences etc in the UK on associated topics I can highly recommend getting in touch with the BBFC. They're really keen to engage with the wider public rather than just be two signatures on the screen just before a film comes on.

Re: Netflix’s Secret Special Algorithm Is a Human

#60

Post by afro88 »

skrebbel wrote: post #47
wallflower wrote: post #31

See also Shazam's Secret > The hunt keeps Mr. Slomovitz on his toes. Every morning, he skims dozens of music blogs, checking for new releases he might have missed, as well as the iTunes, Amazon.com and Billboard charts, and blog aggregators like the Hype Machine. Most weeks he also goes to local record stores to see if there is something in stock he has not heard of, or if older albums are being remastered or reissue…

Shazam actually has 2000 music geeks in a call center who listen to tiny audio fragments and guess which song it is. The algorithm just makes sure the rock geek gets the rock songs, and so on.

Really? I'm genuinely interested in this. Do you have an article or interview or something with more info?
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