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Jeff Bezos on AI (1998) [video]

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

#31

Post by thatoneguytoo »

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…

>But oh, hey, you just bought a vacuum cleaner? I know what you would really like! MORE VACUUMS!

I have worked on the same recommendation systems. It's also the most often oncall issue. The problem is mostly due to lag in event processing (especially orders).

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

#32

Post by emodendroket »

flatline wrote: post #26
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…

There is a famous Dijkstra quote, “The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.” Do the intrinsic properties of the system really matter at the end of the day if it performs as well as we do at some task? Heck they’ve been doing many things better for decades, but those are the types of tasks we take it for granted that a machine should be able…

Sure, it's neat that it can do those things... still I don't think that I'm exactly ready to toss aside books written by humans in favor of AI-generated alternatives.

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

#33

Post by emodendroket »

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #14
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'…

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

This seems like the logical fallacy of "begging the question" since it is far from apparent to me that they are "more capable than us at the majority of tasks."

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

#34

Post by emodendroket »

tsunamifury wrote: post #29
BoiledCabbage wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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'…

He will go on saying it’s a trick. It’s a form of denial I’m seeing everywhere now when faced with something so genuinely terrifying or identity challenging you can’t process it.

Perhaps I can say you're motivated by an Oedipus complex and we can keep the chain going of ad hominem with a thin psychobabble veneer to make it appear serious.

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

#35

Post by jack_pp »

emodendroket wrote: post #32
flatline wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a famous Dijkstra quote, “The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.” Do the intrinsic properties of the system really matter at the end of the day if it performs as well as we do at some task? Heck they’ve been doing many things better for decades, but those are the types of tasks we take it for granted that a machine should be able…

Sure, it's neat that it can do those things... still I don't think that I'm exactly ready to toss aside books written by humans in favor of AI-generated alternatives.

Writers have started using AI-generated ideas to help them write books.

Same with code. Sure it might not write your product code from start to finish with no help but it will speed up your dev speed significantly for certain tasks. Just because we haven't reached singularity doesn't mean what we have now is useless and putting it down as a "parlor trick" as grandparent said seems to me very unwise.

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

#36

Post by nologic01 »

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…

AI is not a parlor trick.

AI is a branch of statistics. Nobody said that statistics must limit itself to quasi-linear models of numerical data. It was just a limitation of computational resources (initially "AI" was developed by human computers).

The trick is to get people not to associate the dictum "lies, damn lies and statistics" with "hallucinations, damn hallucinations and AI".

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

#37

Post by jack_pp »

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…

Well if those are the reasons then why not code it directly?

Ask the user if they liked the product and would likely gift it in the future and add the item to a "Gift ideas" list.

If the user returned then start suggesting immediately an alternative.

Blindly recommending the same thing just because there's a correlation seems stupid. Would be nice to at-least have a nicely visible button to stop recommending this item since I'm done purchasing anything similar for the next couple of years.

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

#38

Post by Mistletoe »

brrrrrm wrote: post #23

I notice that a lot of really successful people speak quite quickly early in their careers. It's almost as if their own voices can't keep up with the excitement they have about their product/idea and they haven't quite honed in the outward presentation of it.

Could just be the Adderall.

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

#39

Post by usgroup »

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…

Not really sure how you can consider ChatGPT a parlour trick. It has been around a relatively short time but for me its replaced a large proportion of my Google searches already. I do not see how its utility can be denied whether it reasons or not (whatever that means).

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

#40

Post by emodendroket »

jack_pp wrote: post #35
emodendroket wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, it's neat that it can do those things... still I don't think that I'm exactly ready to toss aside books written by humans in favor of AI-generated alternatives.

Writers have started using AI-generated ideas to help them write books. Same with code. Sure it might not write your product code from start to finish with no help but it will speed up your dev speed significantly for certain tasks. Just because we haven't reached singularity doesn't mean what we have now is useless and putting it down as a "parlor trick" as grandparent said seems to me very unwise.

Ad copy has served a similar purpose but nobody would claim ad copy has (or could) supplant creative writing because of that.
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