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Jeff Bezos on AI (1998) [video]

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Re: Jeff Bezos on AI (1998) [video]

#11

Post by cookingrobot »

mvdtnz wrote: post #7
foob wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hey, you just bought a vacuum cleaner? I know what you would really like! MORE VACUUMS! This is a common refrain, but I would be amazed if it weren't backed up by data and I anecdotally fit into the mold. If I buy a product that I really like, then I'm likely to buy it again to give as a gift to friends. If I buy something like a a vacuum and I don't like it, then I'm likely to buy a different model that better fits…

You'd buy a vacuum cleaner as a gift for a friend? I find that incredibly hard to believe but if it's true, it's very strange behaviour.

I think the comment was that if they buy a vacuum and don’t like it, they return it and buy a different one. So if that happens 20% of the time, that next month has a much higher chance of buying “another vacuum” than the average month.

Also, I bought my parents a Roomba because I liked mine, so that can happen too.

Re: Jeff Bezos on AI (1998) [video]

#12

Post by Gigachad »

mholt wrote: post #5

The common sentiment around AI in the 90s and early 2000s was that it didn't work; it had its hype, it had its heyday, but it seemed like a dead-end for the most part. The Perceptron was merely a linear function approximator. And the Multi-layer Perceptron was a little more capable, but the many orders of magnitude it would have to scale up in order to be convincing just wasn't feasible back then (it finally was in t…

>That's what ultimately depresses me about AI. It's still just a parlor trick.

I find this to be quite comforting. It means we haven't completely uprooted all of society overnight and have time to stop and think about what this new technology can do for us and what it means for the future.

Re: Jeff Bezos on AI (1998) [video]

#13

Post by j45 »

slimsag wrote: post #2

"Collaborative filtering", "using past activity and stated preferences to guide us" I can't think of areas Amazon does worse in today than these two areas. Reviews are so untrustworthy they are just noise. Those coffee beans I ordered a month ago? I have to go back to my orders page, search (and for some reason their search is dirt slow) - then wade through unrelated products to finally find them. But oh, hey, you ju…

Amazon had fewer items back then and the bar and complexity was lower too.

Re: Jeff Bezos on AI (1998) [video]

#14

Post by BoiledCabbage »

mholt wrote: post #5

The common sentiment around AI in the 90s and early 2000s was that it didn't work; it had its hype, it had its heyday, but it seemed like a dead-end for the most part. The Perceptron was merely a linear function approximator. And the Multi-layer Perceptron was a little more capable, but the many orders of magnitude it would have to scale up in order to be convincing just wasn't feasible back then (it finally was in t…

> That's what ultimately depresses me about AI. It's still just a parlor trick. We haven't actually taught computers to think, to reason, to be innovative.

And what do you feel when we make these parlor tricks more capable than us at the majority of tasks?

And what do you feel when we understand it well enough to realize we're the same type of parlor tricks?

To me it seems like you're most interested in a magic 'aha' moment and will miss or not be prepared for how the road in front of us likely unfolds.

Re: Jeff Bezos on AI (1998) [video]

#15

Post by [deleted] »

ibarearer wrote: post #6
mholt wrote: post #5

The common sentiment around AI in the 90s and early 2000s was that it didn't work; it had its hype, it had its heyday, but it seemed like a dead-end for the most part. The Perceptron was merely a linear function approximator. And the Multi-layer Perceptron was a little more capable, but the many orders of magnitude it would have to scale up in order to be convincing just wasn't feasible back then (it finally was in t…

I hate this sentiment. We might learn that human thought and reasoning are parlor tricks too once we understand them better. Anything we start to understand loses its mystery

[deleted]

Re: Jeff Bezos on AI (1998) [video]

#16

Post by KirillPanov »

mholt wrote: post #5

The common sentiment around AI in the 90s and early 2000s was that it didn't work; it had its hype, it had its heyday, but it seemed like a dead-end for the most part. The Perceptron was merely a linear function approximator. And the Multi-layer Perceptron was a little more capable, but the many orders of magnitude it would have to scale up in order to be convincing just wasn't feasible back then (it finally was in t…

This is why they've called it AI winter the past three times.

It's a season.

Like the seasons, the cycle repeats.

Re: Jeff Bezos on AI (1998) [video]

#17

Post by dharmab »

mvdtnz wrote: post #7
foob wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hey, you just bought a vacuum cleaner? I know what you would really like! MORE VACUUMS! This is a common refrain, but I would be amazed if it weren't backed up by data and I anecdotally fit into the mold. If I buy a product that I really like, then I'm likely to buy it again to give as a gift to friends. If I buy something like a a vacuum and I don't like it, then I'm likely to buy a different model that better fits…

You'd buy a vacuum cleaner as a gift for a friend? I find that incredibly hard to believe but if it's true, it's very strange behaviour.

A vacuum cleaner would be a great housewarming gift, for example.

Re: Jeff Bezos on AI (1998) [video]

#18

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

slimsag wrote: post #2

"Collaborative filtering", "using past activity and stated preferences to guide us" I can't think of areas Amazon does worse in today than these two areas. Reviews are so untrustworthy they are just noise. Those coffee beans I ordered a month ago? I have to go back to my orders page, search (and for some reason their search is dirt slow) - then wade through unrelated products to finally find them. But oh, hey, you ju…

I don't know how the recommendation engines work, but if there are dollars there, i could understand this to be:

Amazon: Sellers! Do you want to advertise to customers interested in vacuums ? Seller: YES! Take my money!

(Amazon proceeds to uprank vacuums to customers with prior vacuum sales)

Re: Jeff Bezos on AI (1998) [video]

#19

Post by Baeocystin »

foob wrote: post #3
slimsag wrote: post #2

"Collaborative filtering", "using past activity and stated preferences to guide us" I can't think of areas Amazon does worse in today than these two areas. Reviews are so untrustworthy they are just noise. Those coffee beans I ordered a month ago? I have to go back to my orders page, search (and for some reason their search is dirt slow) - then wade through unrelated products to finally find them. But oh, hey, you ju…

hey, you just bought a vacuum cleaner? I know what you would really like! MORE VACUUMS! This is a common refrain, but I would be amazed if it weren't backed up by data and I anecdotally fit into the mold. If I buy a product that I really like, then I'm likely to buy it again to give as a gift to friends. If I buy something like a a vacuum and I don't like it, then I'm likely to buy a different model that better fits…

Posting to confirm, having seen back-end sales numbers from (admittedly much smaller) vendors, the correlation between $just_bought_thing and $will_buy_another is very, very high, across pretty much every category I cared to look at.

Re: Jeff Bezos on AI (1998) [video]

#20

Post by Baeocystin »

mvdtnz wrote: post #7
foob wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hey, you just bought a vacuum cleaner? I know what you would really like! MORE VACUUMS! This is a common refrain, but I would be amazed if it weren't backed up by data and I anecdotally fit into the mold. If I buy a product that I really like, then I'm likely to buy it again to give as a gift to friends. If I buy something like a a vacuum and I don't like it, then I'm likely to buy a different model that better fits…

You'd buy a vacuum cleaner as a gift for a friend? I find that incredibly hard to believe but if it's true, it's very strange behaviour.

Several years back a bunch of us pet-owning friends wound up round-robin gifting the same model SpotBot carpet cleaner to each other, because it was something we all agreed made our lives better. Nothing weird about it at all.
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