Every time we meet up with colleagues in the business we have a conversation which touches on the following topic: can you do everything you do automatically? This is a way of asking: is your technology doing cool stuff that I don’t understand?

Our technology does do cool stuff, but I can explain it in words of few syllables. And we check the results before we share it with clients. To identify high-value influencers requires a combination of technology and human cross-checking. Measuring sentiment automatically is an ambition, but our current methodology involves human eyes, ears and brains, aided by number-crunching computers. To rely on technology to make these judgements would be foolhardy. Vast sums are at stake.

Because of this, I was relieved to see John Battlelle’s interview with Google’s Matt Cutts where Cutts confirms what we have long suspected, that even the mightly Google supplements its automated efforts with the intelligence of human beings. As Matt points out: “algorithms aren’t magic; they don’t leap fully-formed from computers like Athena bursting from the head of Zeus. Algorithms are written by people. People have to decide the starting points and inputs to algorithms. And quite often, those inputs are based on human contributions in some way.”

It is worth remembering this, because to be acted upon data needs to be processed by something that can understand, draw conclusions and take actions – a human being. Algorithms can save a human being some time, but they can tell him or her what to do to solve a problem.