Tuesday, July 11, 2006

My TiVO Thinks I'm Twelve

Have you heard of the guy who recorded "The L Word" and a few movies with a gay theme and then TiVO began recording all the gay stuff it could, and the guy wasn't gay?

That was an interesting story. But now I'm facing the same thing. My wife enjoys watching the Adult Swim type of cartoons, including Futurama, Simpsons, Robot Chicken, King of the Hill, etc.

I like them too, but she really loves them. Well, now TiVO has noticed this preponderance towards cartoons and it's recording a bunch of kids stuff from Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, etc. Superhero stuff, Power Puff Girls, you name it.

This is another example of where a machine just can't quite get it right in guessing the preferences of a human being. Amazon's system of guessing what books you'll like has a similar problem. Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, was doing a demo and his book suggestions came up with "Amazon Women from the Moon" because he had bought some other books with the name Amazon in them. Too funny.

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