About a 2 min. read
The marriage of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Human Intelligence (HI) combines each other’s strengths to uncover more pointed, accurate, and insightful findings. CMB’s themeAI tool was recently used to evaluate how toxicity surfaces across various gaming subreddits. themeAI is a quick and accurate tool that uses cutting-edge Natural Language Processing (NLP) packages to identify emerging ideas and feelings within a target population. Whether reviewing Reddit comments, Twitter posts, or Amazon product reviews, AI allows researchers to tap into open-ended sources once too unstructured or massive to be fully analyzed.
While themeAI reviewed and synthesized hundreds of thousands of gaming-related posts to produce initial topics quickly, the CMB team refined its output – filling in keywords, phrases, and blank spots in the machine’s knowledge. For example, if HI is Mario, then AI is his go-kart. AI is powerful, fast, and ready to go, but needs HI’s fine motor control to navigate away from shells, bananas, and to stay on Rainbow Road. CMB’s guild of gamers and researchers fleshed out the findings by highlighting specific and nuanced terminology (such as “Smurf”) and identified sarcasm to expose the true sentiment behind each Reddit post. Ultimately, this combination resulted in an output of distinct themes that reflect the actual language and experience of gamers.
Investing the time for HI to guide an AI tool provides various opportunities for deeper exploration, particularly for brand tracking work. The AI/HI partnership illuminates business questions regardless of industry, and show where a company should take action. Leveraging the latest AI/HI methods can look like:
After the initial toxicity research, CMB could overlay the results on new gaming communities and new data from month-to-month. Using this, game publishers could benchmark the mental health impact of toxic behavior in their community versus a competitor’s, understand which steps to combat toxicity are most appreciated by their players, or gauge user reactions to a beta test or patch to rework and improve the gaming experience ahead of a full release. Ultimately, knowledge of the leading situations, behaviors, and emotions that contribute to toxicity in gaming makes companies more equipped to handle and mitigate spikes in toxicity among players, and to address related backlash.
Interested in uncovering critical themes with the power of HI & AI, like we did with gaming toxicity? Contact us today.