Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 96 posts

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

#81

Post by shaklee3 »

JamesBarney wrote: post #70
hackernews31242 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have worked with a lot of CTOs or similar. Sometimes CTO is a title that can approve large budgets and an effective CTO is actually their direct report. Being a CTO is less about technology and more about understanding the global technical landscape, accounting and legal implications to large budget decision making. If I, for example, choose Microsoft as a vendor will that impact our Pacific market and if so what i…

Sure but sometimes this lack of knowledge will cripple a company. I've had a VP(who had a role similar to the cto for the department) who picked what time series database we should use based on this technology being the best one from a business standpoint. Unfortunately the technology was so bad from a technical standpoint that every single project that used it had it's budget and timeline explode 4-6x. This seems li…

My bet is opentsdb?

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

#82

Post by Spooky23 »

omarchowdhury wrote: post #18
maxxxxx wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Business analysts, attorneys, finance people and IT turned PM/administrative all manage to rise to high technical positions due to business savvy and political ability.

I worked in a place with a CIO who didn’t know how to operate a TV. If you aren’t a tech company, it’s often a liability to have too much tech domain knowledge.

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

#83

Post by hyperpallium »

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…

I have a theory that much of the success of "internet" companies is less due to disruptive business models, and more because they can software.

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

#84

Post by maxxxxx »

Dig1t wrote: post #61
rogerkirkness wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a big enough company where software isn't the product that just means they know the tech that applies to that company. The CIO is probably a fearful late career IT politician and the CTO could have spent 40 years progressively learning more about washing machines or planes.

Another bit that not many people know is that CTOs at big non-tech corps can just pay a consultant to literally tell them what to do (most of the big banks do this) and consulting firms make a ton of money providing this service (namely places like Deloitte etc).

I have the feeling that's how IT is done at my company. They have a huge number of outsourced contractors in India and the US and not very many people who really understand technology and can move things forward.

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

#85

Post by meowface »

hyperpallium wrote: post #83
maxxxxx wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I have a theory that much of the success of "internet" companies is less due to disruptive business models, and more because they can software.

For sure, but it's sometimes a mix of both.

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

#86

Post by steve19 »

Analog24 wrote: post #69
mr_toad wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Acually fitting the model is not the hard part. Ideally you shouldn’t be fitting the model yourself. The idea behind ML is to use brute force computation. If you’re fitting the model by hand, you’re a Statistician.

Statisticians do not fit models by hand, they "fit" models in the same way machine learning pratictioners "train" models. "Fitting" in statistics lingo is completely synonymous with "training" in ML lingo. Statisticians were the original ML practitioners.

I will second this. I use the two words interchangeably. I would probably use the word fit when talking about liner regression and train when talking about a more complex ML model that requires more computation. I really don't remember the last time I fitted a regression model by hand, it would have probably been in a college exam.

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

#87

Post by Kocrachon »

ikeboy wrote: post #73
BrandonWatson wrote: post #36

I ran Kindle software Product Management for 3 years. Left in 2014 AMA about the memo process or OP1/OP2 process.

How did you feel about Kindle jailbreaks? Why not just let people get root if they wanted on the device they paid for?

Don't need to work at Kindle to know that publishers demand the drm, not a require by Amazon itself.

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

#88

Post by JamesBarney »

scottlocklin wrote: post #79
JamesBarney wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but sometimes this lack of knowledge will cripple a company. I've had a VP(who had a role similar to the cto for the department) who picked what time series database we should use based on this technology being the best one from a business standpoint. Unfortunately the technology was so bad from a technical standpoint that every single project that used it had it's budget and timeline explode 4-6x. This seems li…

Out of more than idle curiosity, what was the TSDB?

I would say but it's a small proprietary one that only the company I was working for used. So mentioning it doesn't help any devs avoid a mistake and outs the project.

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

#89

Post by ikeboy »

Kocrachon wrote: post #87
ikeboy wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you feel about Kindle jailbreaks? Why not just let people get root if they wanted on the device they paid for?

Don't need to work at Kindle to know that publishers demand the drm, not a require by Amazon itself.

You can get Kindle books on an Android app on a rooted phone, or on a PC, or on a browser.

Nothing about DRM requires Amazon to jail the device.

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

#90

Post by andrewcanis »

BrandonWatson wrote: post #36

I ran Kindle software Product Management for 3 years. Left in 2014 AMA about the memo process or OP1/OP2 process.

I'm very interested in this 6-page memo, I also found during my PhD that writing can really help clarify thinking. You may think you have a very clear idea in your mind but then when you write this to paper, many gaps can suddenly appear. I've looked all over online for an example of a memo but I couldn't find anything beyond a basic narrative structure.

You mentioned below that you have templated FAQ docs, I'm assuming these templates are the approximate structure of the memo? Would you be willing to share? This would be very helpful for my startup when we are planning our strategy.

Post reply on HN