Can Users Control and Understand a UI Driven by Machine Learning?
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Re: Can Users Control and Understand a UI Driven by Machine Learning?
#2should have swallowed the drive
Re: Can Users Control and Understand a UI Driven by Machine Learning?
#3The article talks about how the problem is users don't know how to change the inputs to effect the outputs but I don't think this is really desirable. Users shouldn't be thinking "If I hover my mouse over this for too long then it will stuff up my suggestions" that ends up with users altering their behaviour to suit the AI when the AI should just give you correct suggestions without the user having to understand how it works.
Re: Can Users Control and Understand a UI Driven by Machine Learning?
#4For those like me who expected this to be an article about ML-generated UI layouts, this is not the case.
Re: Can Users Control and Understand a UI Driven by Machine Learning?
#5The article talks about how the problem is users don't know how to change the inputs to effect the outputs but I don't think this is really desirable. Users shouldn't be thinking "If I hover my mouse over this for too long then it will stuff up my suggestions" that ends up with users altering their behaviour to suit the AI when the AI should just give you correct suggestions without the user having to understand how…
That's a great ideal, but the technology just isn't there.
With any system that tries to adapt to my preferences, I find myself thinking constantly about how my behaviour will influence it. I'm careful about what I upvote, I try to avoid pausing scrolling on uninteresting things, I even avoid reading articles which I don't want to see more of, even if I find the article itself interesting (remember that users are not necessarily logical - e.g. I don't wait clickbait even though I'm just as drawn as anyone else by the titles).
I would happily trade all of that mental load for a couple of buttons after each item "more like this" or "less like this" and a guarantee that nothing else affected the algorithm. No advance in the last ten years has changed my mind about that, and my hopes aren't high for the next ten doing so either.
I think there's a case to be made that even hard AI wouldn't be sufficient to solve the problem. When my bank manager suggests a product to me, I'm doing the same thing - wondering "why are you suggesting this to me, what's motivating this?". I still want inputs and reasoning exposed, not merely for the answer to be, on reflection, correct.
Re: Can Users Control and Understand a UI Driven by Machine Learning?
#6Preference is mostly social. A good recommendation system would need to feel more like a friend than an algorithm. Not only does it need to understand your preferences, it needs to convince you that it understands "where you're coming from" in general so you can relax and be honest with it. And even if that can be achieved technology-wise, how could you comfortably accept an AI system as your friend if its being "controlled" on the back end by a whole organization of people you don't know? There's more than just tech missing from this equation.
Re: Can Users Control and Understand a UI Driven by Machine Learning?
#7The article talks about how the problem is users don't know how to change the inputs to effect the outputs but I don't think this is really desirable. Users shouldn't be thinking "If I hover my mouse over this for too long then it will stuff up my suggestions" that ends up with users altering their behaviour to suit the AI when the AI should just give you correct suggestions without the user having to understand how…
That's a great ideal, but the technology just isn't there. With any system that tries to adapt to my preferences, I find myself thinking constantly about how my behaviour will influence it. I'm careful about what I upvote, I try to avoid pausing scrolling on uninteresting things, I even avoid reading articles which I don't want to see more of, even if I find the article itself interesting (remember that users are not…
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Re: Can Users Control and Understand a UI Driven by Machine Learning?
#8This is a cool topic, but the examples - FB feed, Netflix, etc. - don't really apply. Those systems aren't trying to maximize user control, they are trying to sustain engagement while giving as much control back to the platform as possible. I'd like to see more work on ML driven UI that is specifically trying to enable user -driven intent.
Re: Can Users Control and Understand a UI Driven by Machine Learning?
#9If the system is up front about what the inputs are then I think most of the problems evaporate. The user doesn't need to understand the math behind how 0-5 star ratings get translated into movie suggestions, if the user understands that the star rating is the input and not dumb implicit stuff like dwell time, then the user will have a more agreeable experience with the system.
I've recently created a system for assigning tags to files. The system recommends tags that might be applicable to a file given what the file is already tagged with and what other files are tagged with. There are no other inputs, I'm not trying to extract information from the filename or running image recognition on images or anything like that. It's straight forward multi-label classification similar to a naive bayes spam filter. Straight forward but effective; the relevant tags are often at the very top of the suggestions list.
I've had a few non-technical users try it out and so far the response has been very positive. They don't know how the tag suggester works. All I told them is that when they enter a tag, the suggestions for other tags are refined. If all they know about the algorithm is what inputs it takes, they're comfortable with it. If the inputs are well defined, then the whole thing becomes "just a machine". Similar to how a non-technical user doesn't need to understand how magnetrons work to be comfortable with microwaving some popcorn, a user doesn't need to know how machine learning works to be comfortable with a program employing it. Just make sure they understand the general relationship between the buttons on the front and what the outcome is going to be.
Don't make a microwave that tries to be clever by turning up the power if the user is standing impatiently in front of it. If you do that, the users will start to get paranoid/superstitious about the microwave (and rightfully so!)
Re: Can Users Control and Understand a UI Driven by Machine Learning?
#10This is a cool topic, but the examples - FB feed, Netflix, etc. - don't really apply. Those systems aren't trying to maximize user control, they are trying to sustain engagement while giving as much control back to the platform as possible. I'd like to see more work on ML driven UI that is specifically trying to enable user -driven intent.
That's a good distinction; those systems are fundamentally adversarial and I think a lot of users pick up on that, at least unconsciously. Many of the ways users interact with these systems could be described as defensive.