The Orientation Express

One of the most devastating feelings we can have is expressed by the saying 'That ship has sailed.'. Just like, staying on metaphor, 'being on board' has to be one of the most exhilarating feelings we can experience. The difference between both can be razor-thin - just think: missing your plane, train or bus. We have all cut ourselves on that razor thinking that if we just would have been better informed, we would have made better choices. These cuts are particularly nasty when they're about our career. We're encouraged to make bold choices but the fact of the matter is that bold career moves are a lot like jumping from an aircraft onto a high speed train moving in the opposite direction.

Small wonder people stay put. I didn't (stay put). I managed to land myself on a high speed train even if it was not the one I aimed for originally. For a while there I was, hanging mid air, sometimes to my despair. Ironic because I jumped thinking we could make it easier for people to reorient themselves in their careers, only to find out - ouch!, first person perspective - that there is a real need for it. The public transport metaphors are not coincidental: you are completely on your own, trying to board one of very few trains that will carry you from a place more or less close to where you are to a place more or less close to where you want to go. On top, the schedule is encrypted and the trains rarely on time.

We tried to make The Orientation Express: your own self-driving career car, getting you from where you are to where you want to be in your own time and based on an up-to-date lay of the lands. It's not just a question of technology although technology has a lot to contribute. It's a matter of collectively mapping out the territory and individually seeing the value of the investment (as it is still you yourself in charge of the navigating). This is where our own plan got complicated: it costs money to drive a Google-Street car through career land and it costs time to show individuals that the alternative to trains works for them. We got a handle on the technology though so let's say we got one third of the way ;-).

The technology is where human and machine learning meet the wisdom of the crowds.

Humans learn effortlessly as long as it is done 'naturally'. Machines deal with complex calculations which can hardly be said to be natural. The collective wisdom of crowds builds a common language holding the insights gained over and across generations in a way that feels natural to all those funny human beings who abhor calculating, but routinely beat machines in any non-specialized task. The fact that these three components meet in a field called 'Artificial Intelligence' is telling. The emphasis is definitely on the A in AI; this is a pity, as is our increasing over-all awe for the perfection of exact sciences and technology. In the end, it all begins with human intelligence and therefore also with the humanities.

For our Orientation Express we need a vision that starts humanely. Like this: machines need to inspire humans by thinking on their behalf. Also: we need to inspire machines by letting them think like humans. Finally: humans and machines only really benefit from each other if they tap into the collective wisdom of the crowd which is natural language. These are the ingredients with which it is possible to make a dish that avoids people wasting time on calculations whilst the results of the calculation feel like you've tapped into the collective brain of humanity. What if you chat with the Orientation Express and it gives you the learning and career advise based on the wisdom of a crowd of subject-matter experts? It will just sometimes ask you to give some of your wisdom back.

A bit philosophical, but nothing is more human than philosophy and, don't forget, without philosophers maths wouldn't (continue to) exist.

Which brings us seamlessly to the technological spice in our dish: mathematics, more specifically a probabilistic framework called Bayesian Networks. These allow to deal with a very human concept: causes and effects. Making inferences based on causal links is very effective because it can answer why something is relevant and how something can be attained. Our collective wisdom is also coded to a large extent in causal 'If ... then ...' type constructions. People can navigate easily in causal waters if they have the tools to help them do so. I have always been fascinated by the differences between human and computer thinking. It's never been just a matter of fuzzy against exact, not even just of creative vs repetitive. I've come to realize they probably meet in probability.

Let's just call it statistics and everybody will be acutely aware how painful it is to even try to understand those calculations, which is why we leave them to excel. On the other hand, excel will happily spew out statistical numbers even if they're meaningless. That - semantics - is something it seems we humans will have a monopoly on for a while. So, the Orientation Express is human wisdom meets exact science to extend the human creativity into domains that it was banned from by excessive need of calculation. That's not very different from the first stick used as an extension of the arm. It's also not very different from recommender systems that, still awkwardly (whether it is NetFlix or your local e-commerce shop), calculate 'the best matches' for you.

The other two thirds are plating up the dish. If we don't come to it, somebody else will. Maybe we can help. Time to stop trying to be perfect and to get us a life again.