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What I find surprising is that despite their shallow catalog of content (my opinion), they fail to promote their shows to me that I’m actually interested in. Wh

• mrieck 7y ago
  Their machine learning algorithm is probably optimized to reduce churn and keep subscribers at any cost. By making people search and find content, there might be some subconscious effect on people that makes them think the service has more value. Tricking people subconsciously means less cancelled subscriptions. What's scary is that all these dark patterns Netflix and other tech companies are using are completely obfuscated. No one really understands what's going on because the patterns are part of some complex neural network. In the past they would have been shamed publicly for stuff like this, but now it's only 20% of their users who have such-and-such psychological profile can be exploited this way, while others can be exploited another way and no one knows what's happening. My theory is the more powerful AI becomes, the more it will exploit human psychology until everything sucks. Everyone will have the overwhelming urge to keep spending money while being miserable because that's the optimal customer according to the AI.
  • tenebrisalietum 7y ago
    > My theory is the more powerful AI becomes, the more it will exploit human psychology until everything sucks. It can hardly do worse than what human beings have done to themselves over the millennia and continue to do to each other every day. But it can probably do it faster and more efficiently.