Imagine you’re having difficulty finding the right study for you. You’ve looked at a long list of possible studies at different universities, but you’re still not sure what fits you best. Wouldn’t it be great to have some help deciding which direction you should to go?
Anderson, an IBM engineer, created a real-life version of Harry Potter’s Sorting Hat. The goal of this hat was pure entertainment for his children, but the functionality can be stretched to real life use once it is further developed and possibly disrupt many existing practices.
Anderson’s Sorting Hat runs on IBM Watson’s Natural Language Classifier: a service used for understanding the intent behind text and responding in an appropriate manner, often used in chatbots nowadays (IBM 2017). It can place you in Hufflepuff if your speech proves honesty, or in Gryffindor when he detects courage.
Could this technology be used to help you choose what to study, perhaps even to test your intelligence and group you in a specific education level after primary school (VMBO/HAVO/VWO)? Dozens of tests already exist to help you choose your study or to help you understand who you are. Brixer, for example, is a tool used to identify your personality and measure different types of intelligence, cultural values and core competencies via an e-assessment. This can help you figure out what kind of job would suit your strengths best and even identify companies with a matching culture. Another tool that exists can be found on the website www.16personalities.com. This website helps you understand yourself by labelling you as one of 16 personality types, based on the Myers-Briggs theory and includes the Big Five personality traits. It can even tell you what type your best friend generally is or with what type of personality you would be most happy with in your love life.
What do you think: Is IT smart enough nowadays with AI and deep learning to be able to help you choose a hobby, friends, a study or a job? Can we benchmark people’s ‘specifications’, like we do with devices such as phones or laptops, or even cars? Would you feel uncomfortable with being labelled, stereotyped or pigeonholed by a robot, or would it actually help you understand who you are?
Sources:
16personalities.com. (2017). Our Framework | 16Personalities. [online] Available at: https://www.16personalities.com/articles/our-theory [Accessed 30 Sep. 2017].
Hoekstra, F. (2017). Rapport van assessment voor Vincent van Leeuwen – Brixer. [online] Brixer.nl. Available at: https://www.brixer.nl/profiel/1/publiek/ [Accessed 30 Sep. 2017].
Ibm.com. (2017). Watson Natural Language Classifier. [online] Available at: https://www.ibm.com/watson/services/natural-language-classifier/ [Accessed 30 Sep. 2017].
Muoio, D. (2016). A dad made a real-life ‘Harry Potter’ sorting hat using IBM’s Watson — here’s how it works. [online] Business Insider. Available at: http://www.businessinsider.com/real-life-harry-potter-sorting-hat-uses-watson-2016-6?international=true&r=US&IR=T [Accessed 30 Sep. 2017].
Hello Inge,
Thank you for the intriguing article!
Personally, I’m fairly interested in psychology and consequently, I have tried various personality tests throughout high school and university. While I agree that those tests can provide a good starting point especially for self-reflection, I don’t necessarily believe that even machine learning algorithms empowered tests would give us the ultimate answer for which studies or careers to pursue. From my perspective, there are two areas that must to be examined: first, how to gather relevant data which accurately reflects the personality, interests, skills, gifts of any given individual (a huge pitfall is tacit knowledge in my opinion); second, what kind of changes are factored into the model.
Depending on the theory, personality is either considered to be stable or fluid – from my experience personality does change, notably after adolescence and through the course of adulthood trials. Simultaneously, interests and capabilities also evolve: I think we can all relate to rapid developments regarding desired dream careers; for example, I have considered law, arts, and medicine before deciding on business in high school sophomore year. Therefore, I suppose these services, if consulted frequently over the years, can be utilized as a compass that shows people the right direction or the general area that should be contemplated.
Yet, what I find the most important part of the decision-making process concerning prospective study and/or career fields is gaining hands-on experience which AI will never be able to replicate. Oftentimes, confusion simply stems from unfamiliarity – after all, which teenager knows what exactly the job of a data scientist or a landscape engineer entails for instance. University and company open days help eliminate this uncertainty by offering a chance to gather impressions, as well as career fairs where interaction with potential employers is made possible. Perhaps, AI paired with VR or even mixed reality solutions can make the whole searching process more streamlined, abolish the boundaries of time and physical distance. Just imagine spending a whole day at a research laboratory or a hospital while shadowing a neurosurgeon thanks to the VR technology – surely, we can decide then whether we are interested or not.
Very interesting post. I think many people would like a hat like this helping you to make decisions. However, I think it sound better than it actually is. I have done many personality tests, and they all tell me different thing. Since AI also partly needs input data to learn form, how do we know the data used is actually true. All these tests assign different jobs to different qualities and therefore there is no formal truth. Furthermore, So, such a hat might give you some additional input, which you can use, but the ultimate decision will always have to be yourself to make.