Chapter 2 Section 2.1 Decision Making^{1}

In the article “Gmail’s new mind-reading inbox” I found on CNNMoney.com by David Goldman talks about one of the many new features Google has come out with is “Priority mail”.  I know Gmail does have a Spam box but not all emails are Spam and sometimes you are stuck with a list full of emails in your inbox. Google has introduced this new feature to help users separate their inbox into categories of very important and emails that you can read later. The automatic features sort users very important emails by the users pasts’ activity and seeing whether an email has been opened or replied to. There are also buttons you can click to tell the system which emails are very important or emails you can read later. “+” is for very important and “-” is for emails you can read later. Why is Google doing this? Well, from their sample of 10,000 employees, Google found out that “Priority mail” reduces the time usage an employee spent viewing their emails by 13%. Many companies would prefer their customers to spend a lot of time on their network but Google has no worries because it has no fear of competition as of right now. Google wants to provide better customer satisfaction by making their systems more users friendly. Finally, if you don’t like the new “Priority mail” feature by Google, it can easily be turn off.

Why is this article related to Chapter 2 section 2.1? Because it talks about strategic decision-making and one key factor to that is having valuable information to minimize a company’s flaw (Baltzan,P. & Phillips, 2009). Many executive information systems are taking advantage of artificial intelligence (AI) that “simulates human intelligence such as the ability to reason and learn”. Google’s priority inbox uses neural networks one of the most familiar categories of AI systems. “Neural networks attempts to emulate the way the human brain works and it’s most useful when the decisions involves patterns or image recognition because a neural network can learn from the information it processes” (Baltzan, P. & Phillips, 2009). By looking at the users activity on which emails are opened and replied to, the system can analyze the pattern and categorize them into very important emails and emails that can be viewed later.

What I like about this article is that I can relate to the problem of having a lot of emails in my inbox and it would be nice when the next time I check my emails that the ones I need to read are listed at the top. It would save me time by having to read what’s important first than reading an email that is for leisure.

Article’s site: http://money.cnn.com/2010/08/31/technology/gmail_priority_inbox/index.htm

Works Cited:

Goldman, David. “Gmail’s new mind-reading priority inbox – Aug. 31, 2010.” Business, financial, personal finance     news- CNNMoney.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Sept. 2010.   <http://money.cnn.com/2010/08/31/technology/gmail_priority_inbox/index.htm>.

Baltzan, P. & Phillips, A. (2009). Business Driven Information Systems (second Edition). New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.

By Tommy Category: Strategic Decision Making