What does Narrative Intelligence mean for the future of AI systems?

What exactly is artificial intelligence?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the ability of a computer or a robot controlled by a computer to do tasks that are usually done by humans because they require human intelligence and discernment.

Most savvy organizations already possess some awareness of the conversation surrounding their brands.

How could they not? It’s 2021, and a lot of the world is still learning, working, and coping from home. Add to that fact that everyone is online all the time. There is a dizzying amount of data being passed between millions of devices.

To keep up with the rapid growth of online activity, companies are turning to quicker, more comprehensive tools to measure the returns on their PR, Communications, and Marketing efforts in that space. These tools generate a variety of insights bases on monitoring social media. But is it enough?

What is an example of a narrative device?

Also known as literary devices, narrative techniques provide deeper meaning for the reader and help the reader to use imagination to visualize situations. Common techniques relevant to style, or the language chosen to tell a story, include metaphors, similes, personification, imagery, hyperbole, and alliteration.

What Is Narrative Intelligence?

To get at a more grounded definition of narrative intelligence, we first need to identify all the moving parts. Much like we understand basic intelligence as the ability to collect and apply general knowledge and skills, narrative intelligence is defined in a similar way, incorporating different methods of gathering information from the media into a cohesive whole.

To keep it simple, here we’ll break Narrative Intelligence down into three main areas: listening, understanding, and data analysis.

Listening

Dating back to the bygone days of newspapers, press clippings services were the premier way to scour the media for mentions of your brand. Media monitoring agencies specialized in targeting and collecting copies of media content relevant to your business, filtering it to your liking according to industry, geography, or subject. But simple social media and media monitoring can’t provide a holistic picture of what’s being discussed and amplified online.

Kudzu, our narrative intelligence platform, consumes and analyzes tens of thousands of news articles and online conversations every day, as well as the people and organizations who create them. It can show you how narratives are started, who’s amplifying them, and how they evolve to affect the things in which you’re invested: Your company, your portfolio, your people, and your government.

Understanding

But how can you easily process all of the information coming at you from thousands and thousands of news sources and online narratives? The key lies in the atomization of all of that content.

The Kudzu platform utilizes large-scale consumption of publicly-available information (PAI) and sophisticated data analysis algorithms to extract narrative intelligence and conversation trends from traditional news organizations, social media outlets, video publishing platforms, and other digital sources, then atomizes those sources into easy-to-understand and shareable narrative themes as well as a providing summary of each article.

So not only do you have the narrative intelligence to understand, detect and visualize amplification patterns and behavior among entities of all types, you also have what you need to participate in the conversations that matter to you.

Data Analysis

With such a staggering wealth of data out there, having a platform or tool in place is essential to understanding how it connects, and what business you can make from it. You may begin with a careful look at an increase in the narratives and conversation trends within a specific niche, say FinTech, but how you aggregate that data into a more digestible solution is where data analysis comes in.

Kudzu provides the ability to group entities by national origin, sphere of influence, political or factional affiliation, industry, or any other organizational unit, in order to better determine the origin and evolution of narrative amplification campaigns. As a result, the platform acts as a force multiplier of analysts, who can see connections and patterns earlier, on larger scales, and on deeper levels than they could previously. There is also an extensive data export functionality in order to allow for use in other data-processing and analytics applications.

Narrative Science’s Artificial Intelligence Quill

Like Automated Insights, Narrative Science created their product in order to solve a major problem: the team wanted to give people a “fast and simple way to understand data.” Narrative Science understands that it is a waste to “invest billions sourcing and aggregating data, spreadsheets and dashboards as mechanisms to understand data.” The stories that the data tells are what truly matter; they teach a company about “their operations, their business, [and] their life.” The Narrative Science team concludes the discussion of their product and process by asking a rhetorical question: “what better way to tell stories than through language?” To solve this problem, the team created Quill.

How it Works: Analyze, Generate, and Inform

Quill’s software uses an advanced natural language generation platform in order to interpret data and create narratives. The software can “immediately add value to data by identifying the most relevant information and relaying it through professional, conversational language.” Like Wordsmith, Quill uses natural language generation in order to interpret data.

Narrative Science splitsfont-words-narrative-analysis Quill’s job into three steps: analyze, generate, and inform. First, Quill identifies which facts will form the foundation of a given narrative. In order to do this, Quill determines what matters the most to a business by using a business’ “ rules to identify thresholds, drivers, trends and relationships.” Then,
taking into account a company’s communication goals, business rules, and stylistic preferences, Quill generates the narrative by using natural language generation software.

Quill can then apply natural language, which makes the narrative indistinguishable from a human-written piece. Finally, a company can “increase the value of data by fulfilling the tailored information requirements of all audiences.” Quill informs the public based on a company’s particular target audience and goals. This allows companies to personalize their communication.

Advantages: Changing How We Approach Data

Nick Beil, Chief Operating Officer at Narrative Science, believes that we have lost sight of why we are aggregating data. Companies often feel secure knowing that they have a great deal of data. Unfortunately, they don’t have the tools to understand this data. As a result, most companies have a great deal of data that goes unused.

Quill reminds us that the reason we collect data is because we want to answer questions about our businesses. Not only do we need answers, but we need explanations–we need to know where these answers come from. Kristian Hammond, the Chief scientist at Narrative Science, believes that we derive power from these explanations.

According to Hammond’s video about Quill, the “notion of narrative analytics is a set of tools and techniques where the analysis of data is driven by a company’s communication objectives.” Before a company starts analyzing data, they must first decide what it is they want to say. Every algorithm the company uses must then be driven by their established communication goals. The Narrative Science team hopes that, by helping companies make better decisions, Quill will create a more informed and intelligent world.

Why is narrative intelligence important?

Narrative intelligence is an important part of human cognition, especially in sensemaking and communicating with people. Humans draw on a lifetime of relevant experiences to explain stories, to tell stories, and to help choose the most appropriate actions in real-life settings.

What is Riedls opinion of narrative intelligence?

These ideas have evolved into calls for computational “narrative intelligence,” which computer scientist Mark Riedl defines as “the ability to craft, tell, understand, and respond affectively to stories.” He suggests that narrative intelligence may be a crucial step in machine “enculturation,” allowing artificial.

What is computational narrative?

1Computational narratology is the study of narrative from the point of view of computation and information processing. It focuses on the algorithmic processes involved in creating and interpreting narratives, modeling narrative structure in terms of formal, computable representations.

Are stories a key to human intelligence?

Just as computers might use stories or narratives as a way to structure memory and learning, humans may as well. And just as stories might provide a valuable way to “enculturate” machines, they surely provide a crucial mechanism for the social transmission of information in humans.