Come to me, son of Jor-El! Kneel before Gnod!*

I have been playing with the artificial intelligence software at gnod.com over the past few days. It is sort of like a recommendation software. Here is the description from the website:
Gnod is my experiment in the field of artificial intelligence. Its a self-adapting system, living on this server and 'talking' to everyone who comes along. Gnods intention is to learn about the outer world and to learn 'understanding' its visitors. This enables gnod to share all its wisdom with you in an intuitive and efficient way. You might call it a search-engine to find things you don't know about.

You put in your favorite authors, musicians or authors and Gnod will give you a map of similar artists and people.

Here is a screen shot I did for Orson Scott Card (OSC):


OSC is in the middle of the map. Various other authors are arrayed around him based on what other readers have said. When I look at the map, I do see a lot of other authors that I have enjoyed:
J.K. Rowling, John Iriving, Connie Willis, JRR Tolkein, Douglas Adams, Neil Gaiman, Kurt Vonnegut, and Dan Brown. Many of the other authors listed have piqued my interest before and have come up in conversations with other people. They are on my list.

With music and movies, you can put in three favorites and it will bring back recommendations. When I did it, I knew and liked about half, didn't know a few and didn't like one or two. It was very close to my preferences.

It is a fun site to play with and would be very helpful when looking for moves on Netflix or trying to catch new authors at your library. As far as the music, I would love a way to import the artists into my Pandora or Yahoo! Music stations.

*Yes, that is a Superman II reference.