When you log onto LinkedIn, you’re normally presented with suggestions to connect with people you know, either because you went to the same university as them, or worked in the same company or industry.
However, the suggestions can sometimes take us by surprise, like when the algorithm recommends a relative or family friend even though they work in a totally different field to you. Given the total lack of professional overlap, you might wonder how LinkedIn could possibly know about these real life relationships.
The artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms that drive these recommendations use a type of technology known as a Graph Neural Network, which is based on graphs: mathematical structures made up of nodes and the links (also known as “edges”) that connect them. For a social network such as LinkedIn, a graph can be generated where the nodes represent each user, while the links are the connections between them.
