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Amazon's empire rests on its low-key approach to AI

economist.com

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Re: Amazon's empire rests on its low-key approach to AI

#11

Post by THE_PUN_STOPS »

b_tterc_p wrote: post #5
mi100hael wrote: post #2

> AMAZON’S SIX-PAGE memos are famous. Executives must write one every year, laying out their business plan. Less well known is that these missives must always answer one question in particular: how are you planning to use machine learning? Responses like “not much” are, according to Amazon managers, discouraged. I think company culture & talent make a big difference here. At most companies this would run the risk of…

Can anyone at amazon comment on whether this actually works? Edit: the ai part specifically.

As an Amazonian far flung from AWS, (I am in ground level fulfillment) I have seen some incredible internal AZ programs that utilize ML in unexpected areas to save the company lots of money. So I'm going with yes.

Re: Amazon's empire rests on its low-key approach to AI

#12

Post by varelse »

dodobirdlord wrote: post #9
b_tterc_p wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can anyone at amazon comment on whether this actually works? Edit: the ai part specifically.

From what I have seen 6-pager process and more importantly the clear writing and efficient meetings that it fosters are pretty helpful. It's important to note that a 6-pager contains 6 pages of expected reading and can have as much additional appendix material as you want. I've seen "6-pager" documents that were dozens of pages long, and have heard possibly apocryphal stories of 6-pagers hundreds of pages long for ma…

The ideal of the 6-pager is magnificent. The reality of the 6-pager in 2019 is that it has become boilerplate where style overwhelms substance. Similar things can be said of their OP1 and OP3 planning processes that are becoming increasingly cargo cult IMO. And that arises naturally from a static game whose most experienced players have become better at funding projects than they are at funding better projects.

Though very late to the party (modulo Alexa), Amazon has eagerly embraced AI and machine learning since 2015, but it lacks the leadership for formulating clear targets (see AutoML and AlphaGo Zero as examples of clear targets IMO).

A recent article in _The Information_ made the claim that their entire AI organization is making That is consistent with what I saw there: an effectively infinite number of codemonkeys throwing unprocessed data at randomly chosen AI algorithms downloaded off of github and hoping for the best. It's an interesting experiment, but it seems to be about as efficient as a monkey throwing darts to pick stocks (which is surprisingly better than many biased investment advisors admittedly). Time will tell, no?

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/demand-soaring-for-a...?

Re: Amazon's empire rests on its low-key approach to AI

#13

Post by joe_the_user »

mi100hael wrote: post #2

> AMAZON’S SIX-PAGE memos are famous. Executives must write one every year, laying out their business plan. Less well known is that these missives must always answer one question in particular: how are you planning to use machine learning? Responses like “not much” are, according to Amazon managers, discouraged. I think company culture & talent make a big difference here. At most companies this would run the risk of…

At most companies this would run the risk of poorly shoe-horning ML into a bunch of applications and making everything needlessly complex & expensive without seeing improved results (same goes for blockchain).

Sure, and in Amazon, you get a few tweaks that get the company a few bucks. It suspect the article wildly overstates the value of ML to Amazon.

Amazon's success seems to rest on: A. Attracting enough capital to get huge and stay huge with generally low margins. B. Being willing to slide into related businesses for extra-profits. C. Not jumping into one or another dumb trendy investments that would burn up all the capital they get from A & B.

Well, the memos might help B & C, for all I know.

Ten years ago, Amazon and Ebay split the ecommerce/storefront world. Ebay never managed to make themselves fully consumer friendly with hard guarantees and Amazon did. The auction-based, at-your-own-risk world is inherently limited and Ebay never escaped that - I wish they had 'cause then Amazon would have had real competition.

Re: Amazon's empire rests on its low-key approach to AI

#14

Post by natalyarostova »

joe_the_user wrote: post #13
mi100hael wrote: post #2

> AMAZON’S SIX-PAGE memos are famous. Executives must write one every year, laying out their business plan. Less well known is that these missives must always answer one question in particular: how are you planning to use machine learning? Responses like “not much” are, according to Amazon managers, discouraged. I think company culture & talent make a big difference here. At most companies this would run the risk of…

At most companies this would run the risk of poorly shoe-horning ML into a bunch of applications and making everything needlessly complex & expensive without seeing improved results (same goes for blockchain). Sure, and in Amazon, you get a few tweaks that get the company a few bucks. It suspect the article wildly overstates the value of ML to Amazon. Amazon's success seems to rest on: A. Attracting enough capital to…

Wal-mart is real competition.

Re: Amazon's empire rests on its low-key approach to AI

#15

Post by beastcoast »

b_tterc_p wrote: post #5
mi100hael wrote: post #2

> AMAZON’S SIX-PAGE memos are famous. Executives must write one every year, laying out their business plan. Less well known is that these missives must always answer one question in particular: how are you planning to use machine learning? Responses like “not much” are, according to Amazon managers, discouraged. I think company culture & talent make a big difference here. At most companies this would run the risk of…

Can anyone at amazon comment on whether this actually works? Edit: the ai part specifically.

The article overstates the use of ML at least in fulfillment we use a lot of math models (eg xpress solver) and optimization algorithms (traveling salesmen type problems) but not so much in the ML space.

Re: Amazon's empire rests on its low-key approach to AI

#17

Post by frontloadpro »

natalyarostova wrote: post #14
joe_the_user wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At most companies this would run the risk of poorly shoe-horning ML into a bunch of applications and making everything needlessly complex & expensive without seeing improved results (same goes for blockchain). Sure, and in Amazon, you get a few tweaks that get the company a few bucks. It suspect the article wildly overstates the value of ML to Amazon. Amazon's success seems to rest on: A. Attracting enough capital to…

Wal-mart is real competition.

Walmart Online is cheaper than Amazon.

Ive started making the switch.

Re: Amazon's empire rests on its low-key approach to AI

#18

Post by omarchowdhury »

maxxxxx wrote: post #10
mi100hael wrote: post #2

> AMAZON’S SIX-PAGE memos are famous. Executives must write one every year, laying out their business plan. Less well known is that these missives must always answer one question in particular: how are you planning to use machine learning? Responses like “not much” are, according to Amazon managers, discouraged. I think company culture & talent make a big difference here. At most companies this would run the risk of…

There is also the story of Amazon mandating that all internal systems communicate with each other through APIs. I think leadership at Amazon has good technical knowledge so they can develop these strategies and see them through. In my company nobody with a "C*O" title (including CIO and CTO) has any clue about tech so they are very susceptible to snake oil salesmen telling them things like "we must do ML". So they te…

How can someone become a CTO without having any clue about tech?

Re: Amazon's empire rests on its low-key approach to AI

#19

Post by gordon_freeman »

I think a lot of people just don't realize that Machine Learning can be as simple as a linear regression with 2 variables. The hype and myth around ML are such that some employers just assume that they need to hire rockstar data scientists to do ML but in reality, a junior level data analyst or even a non-technical employee can do simple ML model in Excel spreadsheet assuming he/she has some background in Stats 101.

Re: Amazon's empire rests on its low-key approach to AI

#20

Post by joe_the_user »

natalyarostova wrote: post #14
joe_the_user wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At most companies this would run the risk of poorly shoe-horning ML into a bunch of applications and making everything needlessly complex & expensive without seeing improved results (same goes for blockchain). Sure, and in Amazon, you get a few tweaks that get the company a few bucks. It suspect the article wildly overstates the value of ML to Amazon. Amazon's success seems to rest on: A. Attracting enough capital to…

Wal-mart is real competition.

Amazon now is something like a fusion of Ebay and Walmart. Either of those enterprises (or Target or etc) could move into the full space that Amazon operates in, it seems like.

Edit: I suspect that what keeps an enterprise like Walmart or Costco from jumping into full competition with Amazon is that each of these enterprises wants to fish some high profit zone of the eComerce ocean while Amazon wants to be the ocean.

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