Algorithms seem to be dictating just about every facet of life these days, including what you pick out of your closet, and online-shopping platform, PSYKHE, is using a program of psychological profiling to create style recommendations.
When customers sign up, they are instructed to take the big five personality test, assessing personal preferences, which creates the profile.
"So essentially, the big five is the most robust and respected model in psychology. You end up essentially, from 1 to 100 in each of these five scales, resulting in a really specific composite score," Anabel Maldonado, PSYKHE founder and CEO, told cheddar.
Once a customer has completed the test, they can explore their specially curated shopping experience. Over time, the algorithm will improve at making selections that best suit your personality, Maldonado added.
While concerns have grown over the years regarding human bias entering these kinds of algorithms, Maldonado explained that a somewhat diverse staff worked on the initial training set for the artificial intelligence and that the system’s ability to learn shopping tendencies over time can hopefully ensure that a diverse customer base is being served.
She also said that the system’s ability to track dislikes or rejected suggestions is "almost as valuable, if not more," than understanding what a customer does like because a wider variety of options are available.
"Currently the status-quo is that you look at dwell time, and clicks, and purchase history. We don’t really feel that works as well, especially purchase history," Maldonado noted.
PSYKHE looks to avoid repetitive suggestions or similar recommendations that have already been purchased, according to the CEO. And, while PSYKHE is just the latest venture for Maldonado, she plans to expand the brand beyond clothing, using the same artificial intelligence.
"The interesting thing is the relationships between your big five scores and your preferences, health outcomes, behavior, music preference, really a variety of things is what makes the technology so valuable," she said.
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
