How can AI help people make better decisions?
Machine Translation of Reviews in Booking.com.
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Since long, the time when we lived together as hunters and gatherers, we have been accustomed to follow what the majority went about. Why so?
Because it saved energy from spending it on trial and errors. It gave us quick and safe paths to pursue which was already tested for its risk and proven worthwhile our time.
The fundamental behaviour of humans hasn’t changed much in the millions of years whence passed. What has changed between then and now is only the medium through which we gather wisdom of the crowd.
Back then, people gathered in a spot, mostly designated as public square, to exchange information and collectively decide the next course of action. Today, we gather ourselves on Internet, a virtual meeting place, to assimilate public information and individually decide our actions.
Village is not the World:
Though the decision making process between then and now may appear to be same but they are quite not!
With internet and as a result of more information, dreams of an individual has grown, too. The volume and variety of information available on internet is much larger than what used to be few decades ago. And so, one has to search for more information much longer, assimilate and retain greater amount of relevant information and spend significant amount of energy to weigh options and decide.
An example for such complex decision making scenario happens when one searches travel websites to find a stay or things to do in an unknown part of the world. I will take the case of Booking.com where I work. On Booking.com, people have choice of 2 million properties to search through and 160 million reviews to read before they decide to book a hotel.
From user research studies we know that travel reviews are one of the top 3 factors influencing decision making next to Price and Location.
Price and Location are decided by the market and the user needs respectively…
