“Psychology!“ Said The Sorting Hat

30

September

2017

5/5 (1)

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].

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‘Perfect’ Price Discrimination – The Ethics of Personalized Pricing

25

September

2017

5/5 (3)

After reading the chapter on “Pricing Information” by Shapiro and Varian, one critical question for me came up: How ethical are price discrimination strategies? Isn’t discrimination illegal?

It has become a puzzle to figure out what influences the prices of airline tickets: Is it influenced by the day of the week you book them, the identification of demand for this destination & date via the search history of your IP address or the fullness of the plane’s capacity? The main struggle for me lies with the second option that depends on your behavior and data. Perhaps even more data is used from your google profile to identify your personal traits and spendable wealth! There is no transparency to the calculation of these prices, causing frustration amongst customers.

Isn’t increasing a flight price by 25% because you looked at this offer once before at your IP address the same thing as increasing the price of those bananas you buy every week? Isn’t it frustrating when the person next to you gets to pay a different price for the same good? I believe price discrimination is unfair in either case. I worry especially for discrimination on demographic factors such as sex or race, but also for perceived wealth as this can falsely drive up flight prices with people that can barely afford them. Luckily, gender-based pricing, also called the ‘woman-tax’ or ‘pink-tax’, is actually banned in California after research pointed out pink razor blades for women were sold at a higher price than black or blue razor blades for men (Willett, 2017).

I understand that price discrimination is necessary and beneficial in many cases, but it should always remain transparent and ethical. The aviation industry should be clear about the factors that influence pricing as to not cause illegal discrimination concerns, general frustration or costs of unclarity such as extra baggage fees (Charlton, 2017). One-to-one marketing and personalized pricing should be used with caution.

References
Cheapair.com. (2017). The Best Time to Buy a Flight is 54 Days Out…Or Is It? | CheapAir. [online] Available at: https://www.cheapair.com/blog/cheapair-news/the-best-time-to-buy-a-flight-is-54-days-out-or-is-it/ [Accessed 25 Sep. 2017].
Gill Charlton (2017). ‘Expedia’s confusing website cost me £180 in bag fees’. [online] The Telegraph. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/advice/Expedias-confusing-website-cost-me-180-in-bag-fees/ [Accessed 25 Sep. 2017].
Shapiro, C., and Varian, H. (1998). Pricing Information. In Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to
the Network Economy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
Willett, M. (2017). Here’s proof women pay more for the same products men buy. [online] Business Insider. Available at: http://www.businessinsider.com/womens-products-more-expensive-than-mens-2015-4?international=true&r=US&IR=T [Accessed 25 Sep. 2017].

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