Techspert: Search and Experts

April 6, 2020

How Our AI Search Technology Finds Experts Others Can’t” provides a crunchy description about an application of artificial intelligence. Techspert.io provides a diagram of its approach:

techspert small

The idea is that the approach operates with pinpoint precision. Then a semantic search engine is used to identify context. The old school lingo was Endeca’s Guided Search or maybe side search. Then a social graph is generated. That’s a relationship map like those used by i2 Ltd’s Analysts Notebook in the early 1990s. The i2 Ltd outfit had some Cambridge grads on its team. Finally the system can identify candidates.

What’s interesting is that the pinpoint angle appears to focus on a narrow domain; that is, individuals in STM with a focus on the M (medicine, biotechnology, etc.). This approach reduces the difficulty of indexing for any business or technical discipline. Focus means that descriptive terms are narrower than general business lingo. Second, the crawling for specialized personnel becomes somewhat easier because many sites can be ignored because they are not related to medicine and related fields; for example, the garden gnome site www.designsoscano.com. Plus, the social graph complexity can be reduced by applying qualifiers that NOT out individuals and other entities unrelated to the focus of Techspert.io; for example, David Drummond and Jennifer Blakely.

Several observations are warranted:

  1. The implemented method is useful when deployed in a focused way; that is, vertical search for different “terminologies”.
  2. Scaling the approach across different content domains may require innovative engineering. And the engineering solutions will be expensive to implement, update, and enhance.
  3. Generating market magnetism will require effective marketing and sales programs. Business development must generate sufficient revenue because once certain hires are made by a company, the recruiting service is put on ice; and sustainable revenues will have to come from recruiting services which offer lower costs, perquisites to customers, etc. These factors may inhibit some venture cash investments.

Worth monitoring this firm. A pivot may be necessary due to the uncertain economic environment.

Stephen E Arnold, April 6, 2020

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