There are approximately seven billion people in the world
who live both near and far from us. With advancements in technology we are able
to connect with people from all walks of life and just about every part of the
world. Two MIT graduate students, Mohammad Ghassemi and Tuka Al-Hanai, are
trying to get in on the trend of people wanting to connect over their
electronic devices. They created an algorithm that connects students at MIT for
friendly lunch dates to meet people all across campus that they likely wouldn’t
meet otherwise.
They first started with a Google doc which they sent to the
student body so that they could sign up for said lunch dates once a week for
the semester. The form is essentially a survey that asks you questions to test
your compatibility with another person. Both of the students had experience
with the branch of Computer Science involving artificial intelligence and they
developed an algorithm together for their project that they call ‘Maven’. The
algorithm involves link analysis, which you can read about in one of my previous
blogs, to analyze the links made between two people. The more connections, the
higher chance of two people being matched together.
Many people at the University say that they enjoy this
program as it allows them to make friends easier and to not have the fear that
freshmen often feel of going to an event by themselves. The love of this program is shown as,“93 percent of participants
said that they rate the program four or above”. Hopefully this can be brought
to the University of Richmond to help students acclimate better to campus life.
References:
https://anniecoops.com/tag/connections/
https://www.eecs.mit.edu/news-events/media/algorithm-connects-students-most-interesting-person-theyve-never-met
This was really smart, but I don't hope it comes to the University of Richmond. It may be hard to acclimate at first, but the right way is rarely the easy way. Humans are at nature social beings, and by using such a program are deprived of their social skills, hence their nature. It may not be easy to meet new people at first, but the more times you have to do it, the easier it becomes, and it's much more satisfying and beneficial to overcome a difficult situation, than to be handed an easy solution.
ReplyDeleteI am not arguing against the effectiveness or quality o this program - on the contrary; It would just be unfortunate if this became the new 'thing' in our society.
Hey Mariah, cool post! It sounds like the algorithm they use would be pretty simple. Maybe they could expand this by having users fill out a form about their interests and then match them with someone who has the similar likes/dislikes so that meeting would be more likely to develop into a great friendship!
ReplyDelete