FAQ
Q. What is Euraeka?
A. Euraeka is an Artificial Intelligence engine applied to the search, discovery and recommendation of news.
Q. What do you mean by Artificial Intelligence?
A. Artificial Intelligence is the field that tries to capture the properties of human intelligence and reproduce it on machines such as computers. Think of Euraeka as a brain in a box capable of making intelligent decisions at the speed of light (well, electricity actually).
Q. So what do you mean by search engine for news?
A. On the surface Euraeka is like other search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN Live) - you go to the site and type keywords for topics of interest and it will return the best results that match that topic. For instance, you can search Euraeka for things like "Obama presidential election" and the engine will return relevant results. Where Euraeka is different from other search engines is how it determines what results to show you. The problem of news collection and ranking is a fascinating one, unlike the typical content that search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN gather and display. When you search for news topics very different factors need to be considered in order to bring you the nest results. Euraeka solves that problem using its artificial intelligence engine.
Q. What does news discovery mean?
A. Suppose there is a very important topic that mainstream media doesn't want to cover or is simply unaware of. Even if it eventually reaches the mainstream media it may not occupy prominent place or may be considered outdated by then. One way or another, timeliness in news is of paramount importance. So is fairness and representation of all topics, which mainstream media has a fairly poor record of. Even the term "media bias" was coined to signify that problem. Basically, Euraeka discovers important news and topics before other major media and assigns them a rank appropriate for their importance. The most important news propagate to the top for everyone to see. And since Euraeka is a machine, it doesn't have any "media bias" or "ulterior motives". If the news is important we'll promote it to its appropriate status.
Q. Can you give me an example?
A. When the former Governor of New York state Eliot Spitzer was caught employing highly paid prostitutes, the media that "broke" the news was thought to be the New York Times. However, another local Washington DC newspaper had actually broken the news several hours earlier, but for various unknown reasons it took mainstream media seven hours to publish the news, after it was already known in certain circles in DC. Euraeka found that news article on the local newspaper , immediately recognized its importance and place it at the top of our Controversial news section, seven hours before New York Times.
Q. What about the recommendation of news?
A. Every human being has transient topic of interest and long term topics of interest. For example, almost everybody would be interested in learning what exactly happened when there is a plane crash accident or the stock market reaches historic lows. Those are news of generic interest, because they either appeal to everybody for some reason or affect the lives of many people. However, everyone also has unique interest due to his or her unique lifetime experience and interaction with the world. For instance, a quantum physics hobbyist would likely be more interested in reading articles on the latest advances in quantum mechanics than articles on graphic design (it IS certainly possible for someone to enjoy both).
If everyone has unique tastes, then how do you satisfy them all? The answer is twofold. The front page of Euraeka presents the news that should be of short interest to most people. Things like accidents, major political or social events, economic news, etc. Once a person registers with the site, Euraeka starts tracking what articles they read, with what level of interest, and what topics are not of interest. Within a very short time period, Euraeka builds a unique model of each person's long term interests and can now go back to its database and find articles interesting to that person. With millions of articles in Euraeka's database, the one you are looking for may never reach the front page b/c it is esoteric enough to not be appealing to the largest group of people. However, Euraeka know that it is important to you and can find it and display it when you login into the site.
To think of it another way - imagine you have an identical twin that has the same interests as yours. Instead of scouring through mountains of information and millions of articles on your own, your identical twin can do that for you, and when you are ready to read, the articles are waiting for you. No time wasted in trudging through junk and information "noise" that clutters so much the of web these days.
Q. How can I get my own personal recommendations?
A. It's simple, just do the following:
- Register for a free account here
- Login into the site here
- Find news articles that may be of interest to you. There are several ways to do that:
- You can type search words in the search box at the top right corner. When the results come back, if you click on an article the system records this action as an indication that you like the article. For the articles that you don’t like you simply click the “remove” link next to each article and that tells the system that you don’t want any more articles like that one.
- There are topic links to the right of the screen that contain a number of different generic news categories – i.e. things like politics, science, technology, etc. You can click on one of those categories and the system will only show articles from that category. Again, when the results come back simply click on the ones you like and click on “remove” for the ones you don’t like.
- On the front page there is a tab menu at the top which says “Tags”. When you click on it, it shows the top news topics for the day. If you click on any topic it will bring back results and then you follow the same like/dislike process to tell the system what you like.
- Just click on what you looks interesting. The system will take those articles and use them to generate future recommendations.
Q. That's fine, but how is that important?
A. Contemporary science says that there are a number of factors that make a news article important. One important vital sign is how controversial and emotionally charged the topic of the article is. We measure that vital sign and call it...you guessed it - Controversial. When you sort the news by Controversial, the site is showing you the news of the day that has the highest values for that vital sign.
Another characteristic that affects the importance of news is the ability of an article to capture AND hold people's attention. We call that Popularity and consequently you can sort the news by Popularity.
Finally, a VERY important quality is the intent of the author of the article, namely the intent to fairly present information or deceive. For example, propaganda political speeches tend to have high levels of deceptiveness. Well written articles, written analytically and with balanced viewpoints, tend to have much lower levels of deceptiveness. Euraeka measures that level of deceptiveness and you can use that feature to avoid Misleading articles - i.e. articles that have high levels of deceptiveness. One thing to note is that deceptiveness is not related to factual accuracy. For instance, a person could be writing an article in perfectly good faith and have the wrong factual information.
Deceiving is about the intent to deceive, not the correctness of the provided information. The infamous polygraph (or lie detector) operates on the same principle. Authorities are looking for cues that a person is intentionally stating information they they do NOT believe to be true. Same with Euraeka - we built a linguistic polygraph that tries to measure the level if deceptive intent. This way you can not only avoid the news that are trying to mislead you, but you also find out what media publishes misleading articles. In other words, if all your life you thought that the [fill in the blanks] newspaper is publishing articles in good faith then you might be in for a big surprise.
Q. What about these things I see next to some articles that say Conservative or Liberal?
A. You won't be surprised if we tell you that the country has been and still is very polarized politically in the last 8-9 years. In fact, broken down by party affiliation, the vast majority of people claim to read political news almost exclusively within their preferred political spectrum. In other words, if you are a hardcore conservative, you probably would like to read mostly conservative articles and remove the liberal ones from your view (and vice versa of course). Well, with Euraeka now you can do just that.
Euraeka detects the political bias of an article and displays it on the screen. When you see an article with your preferred political orientation simply click on the article's political orientation and Euraeka will display only articles form that side of the political spectrum. It also helps you see in the long term what is the political orientation of major news outlets that claim to be "independent". There is rarely such a thing. When it comes to fundamental issues like abortion, taxes, and death penalty, every person stands on one of the two sides. So, over time you can start to distinguish the predominant political bias of major independent news outlets like the Washington Post, the New York Times, The Miami Herald, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, etc.
Q. This is all very interesting but how is this important to me?
A. The Associated Press (AP) performed one of the largest studies on the consumption of news. The research discovered that people in the 21st century are "...enlightened consumers turning news into 'units of social currency that could be used in a variety of interpersonal situations' to look smart, connect with friends and family and even move up the socioeconomic ladder.[p. 47]". As it turns out, without news a fulfilled social life is almost impossible. News is the currency that binds us all together in social situations. It's the glue that enables us to establish and hold effective and enriching conversations and even relationships.
And yes, we realize that a study conducted by the Associated Press that says "news is important!" may have a slight bias to it...still, the research we've done on our own does fall in line with this finding.
So, we think that news is probably pretty important to you. But news can be just as harmful as beneficial. Just think of the deceptiveness discussed earlier. Misleading news can sway the opinion of millions of people in the wrong direction without them even realizing it. Euraeka discovers everything that is good and beneficial in the news worlds, while discarding the rest. Euraeka makes you a more informed individual - as the AP study put it - "an enlightened consumer".
