14 ms·

Jeff Bezos on AI (1998) [video]

121 points by _lnoc 3y ago

slimsag 3y ago
"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 just bought a vacuum cleaner? I know what you would really like! MORE VACUUMS! I guess they innovated on those two areas in 1998, and then since then the only thing they did was remove the `review-count-rank` sorting option so their AI can suggest Amazon Brand products.
- foob 3y ago
  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 my needs. It seems silly when you aren't interested in buying another one of whatever item you bought, but there are multiple legitimate reasons that people would want to.
  - mvdtnz 3y ago
    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.
    - tonymillion 3y ago
      It truly is a gift that sucks
    - interfixus 3y ago
      I did, not a month ago. Nothing strange about the process whatsoever.
    - cookingrobot 3y ago
      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.
    - dharmab 3y ago
      A vacuum cleaner would be a great housewarming gift, for example.
    - Baeocystin 3y ago
      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.
      - 59nadir 3y ago
        The fact that you had to preface this with you and your friends being pet owners kind of does make it a special case. You being suggested this vacuum cleaner by Amazon after buying it also doesn't do anything for you in this scenario because you bought the same one for your friends, so the recommendation wasn't needed. I think people are losing sight of the original argument which is that Amazon's recommendations can sometimes overemphasize recent purchases with very little context around what the items are.
        rudasn 3y ago
        Yeah, but everyone is "special case" in retail.
    - TheCoreh 3y ago
      I've done it before: shortly after I bought a robot vacuum; I gave the exact same model as a birthday gift
  - Baeocystin 3y ago
    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.
    - jodrellblank 3y ago
      But surely if you just bought a <Roomba> and like it and intend to buy it again as a gift then you don’t need an advert for Roombas - (and showing you such an advert followed by you buying another Roomba is making the advert look more effective than it was) - and you definitely don’t need an advert for Bissel or Dyson, and you definitely don’t need a dozen adverts for Amazon PLINGBA BEST VACUUM, TYBCHO VACUUM EXPERT, DAOLPTRY VACUUM CLANER etc etc?
      - Baeocystin 3y ago
        Showing someone ads for products in a category they recently purchased from is one of the most effective things a store can do, in terms of focused advertising driving sales. We can wonder why, but the data is exceedingly clear.
  - jack_pp 3y ago
    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.
- neilv 3y ago
  > But oh, hey, you just bought a vacuum cleaner? I know what you would really like! MORE VACUUMS! Amazon did literally this to me just a couple days ago. I'd bought a vacuum cleaner on Amazon a week earlier, and, when doing an Amazon checkout of a cart with one item, it threw up a list of consumable items that I'd bought in the past, to possibly add to the order... including another one of those $120 upright vacuum cleaners. (Maybe they have data that says this makes them more money, even though I'd guess it might hurt customer confidence in the site.)
- j45 3y ago
  Amazon had fewer items back then and the bar and complexity was lower too.
- IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
  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)
- thatoneguytoo 3y ago
  >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).
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mholt 3y ago
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 the 2010s). Simple statistical models that aren't "AI" so much as just generic ML were and are quite useful: like recommendation and newsfeed engines ("the Algorithm" as we call it so often today). Love 'em or hate 'em, they can be quite good at predicting interest/engagement. The resurgence in deep learning in the 2010s has shown us new magic tricks, but they're still just that: parlor tricks. At least they're more convincing tricks than what we had 40 years ago! 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. Deep learning is definitely having its day, but I suppose this too will pass unless we can unlock certain ways to make AI reliable and responsible. Or... to just start understanding it in general.
- corethree 3y ago
  The parlor tricks are getting better. In terms of practicality you just need to look at AI art. That stuff is good enough to replace the real thing. In terms of actual sentience, understanding I had chatGPT answer questions in the following order: 1. Describe to me what happens when you throw sugar in coffee 2. Describe the same thing in terms of atoms. 3. Is this an example of entropy decreasing? 4. What if the arrow of time was reversed. Describe what happens again at the atomic level. 5. What if there were two regions in space one with increasing entropy and another with decreasing entropy. I place the coffee cup such that one half is in one region the other half is in the other region. What happens? Each answer displayed astonishing understanding of what occurs. This was the final answer to the fifth question: ----------------------------------------------- The scenario you've proposed is purely hypothetical and quite speculative because it defies our current understanding of the laws of physics, particularly the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which stipulates that entropy in an isolated system tends to increase. Nevertheless, it's a fascinating thought experiment. Here's what might happen if you had a cup of coffee straddling two such regions: The Increasing Entropy Region: Dissolution and Distribution: On this side, sugar would behave as it does in our observable universe. It would dissolve in the coffee and disperse randomly throughout the half of the liquid. Mixing and Thermal Energy: Molecules in this region would continue to collide and interact based on thermal motion, contributing to faster dissolution and dispersion of sugar. Sweetening: The coffee in this half would become sweet as the sugar molecules interact with the liquid and dissolve. The Decreasing Entropy Region: Reforming Crystals: On this side, dissolved sugar would spontaneously start forming sugar crystals, leading to a decreasing level of entropy. Unmixing: The sugar would start to separate from the coffee and move to form a distinct layer or solid chunks, further decreasing entropy in that half. Unsweetening: Any sweetness initially imparted to this side would disappear as sugar molecules revert to a more ordered state. Challenges: Interface: The most mysterious part would be at the interface where the two regions meet. Would a sugar molecule crossing from the increasing to the decreasing entropy region suddenly reverse its course? Would there be some form of "entropy gradient" or "entropy tension" at the boundary? This part is extremely speculative and likely paradoxical. Energy Conservation: Energy conservation laws might become complicated here. The energy required for sugar to crystallize in the decreasing entropy zone would have to come from somewhere, and how this balances with the increasing entropy side would pose a significant scientific puzzle. Thermodynamic Anomalies: The coffee cup itself would be under very peculiar thermodynamic conditions, subject to two entirely different sets of rules. The temperature might behave inconsistently across the boundary, and heat exchange would likely be disrupted in perplexing ways. Taste Experience: If you were to taste the coffee, each half of the cup would offer a radically different experience, one sweet and the other likely reverting back to its original unsweet state. Perceptual Paradox: From a human perception standpoint, witnessing sugar both dissolve and crystallize in the same cup of coffee would be a profound and likely disorienting experience. Time's Arrow: This set-up implicitly questions the nature of time itself. Time seems to behave differently on each side, challenging our deepest notions about causality, sequence, and even reality. Again, it's worth noting that this scenario conflicts with our current understanding of physics, but it's a fascinating avenue for speculative thought. Such a universe, if it could exist, would fundamentally challenge our understanding of physical laws and reality as we know it. ------------------------------------------------- This answer here is anything but a magic trick. It shows deep understanding of conceptual reality by answering complex questions that are unlikely to exist anywhere else on the internet. The AI literally talked about the mysterious interface without me prompting it at all. It knows the conceptual consequence of two regions of space side by side with differing levels of entropy. The answer is not simply a trick of the next best language token. Is it a practical answer? No. Because the question itself isn't practical. But a non-practical answer does not make this answer a parlor trick. The entire internet is dismissing this thing as a parlor trick because LLMs fail to add large numbers. I mean come on man. You don't need to be able to do math like a calculator in order to "understand" things. AI is not yet completely practical. That much is true. However, it is clearly No longer a parlor trick and it is getting closer and closer to transitioning into practical. When that day comes.... Good luck to us all.
brrrrrm 3y ago
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.
- Mistletoe 3y ago
  Could just be the Adderall.
amarshall 3y ago
Article has no body for me. Site appears to use an iframe whose src expects the Referer header to be sent, but I have `network.http.referer.XOriginPolicy = 1`set in FF about:config to reduce cross-origin leakage, so no Referer is sent.
- array-species 3y ago
  Great point. It is using cloudflare stream. https://developers.cloudflare.com/stream/viewing-videos/using-the-stream-player/ https://developers.cloudflare.com/stream/viewing-videos/usin... Open to any recomendations for alternative as i too am quite displeased with the state of such things. But still prefer it to YouTube. I believe the media server is set to reqire referer to prevent embeding on alternative origins.
  - amarshall 3y ago
    Seems to be https://developers.cloudflare.com/stream/viewing-videos/securing-your-stream/#hotlinking-protection https://developers.cloudflare.com/stream/viewing-videos/secu.... Probably can be disabled and replaced with short-lived signed tokens. Though perhaps CloudFlare could have used [more modern iframe restrictions][1]. [1]: https://w3c.github.io/webappsec-csp/#frame-ancestors-navigation-response https://w3c.github.io/webappsec-csp/#frame-ancestors-navigat...
sytelus 3y ago
The fascinating thing is that this guy has literally 100s of billions in pocket. He ALSO has all the time in the world. He can do anything he wants. Anything. The dude is smart, genius, visionary. He even precisely knows what needs to be done. And what is he really doing? It is simply breathtaking.
Sparkyte 3y ago
Is Jeff still able to convey such a technical response anymore?
DueDilligence 3y ago
[dead]

121 points by _lnoc 3y ago

"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 just bought a vacuum cleaner? I know what you would really like! MORE VACUUMS! I guess they innovated on those two areas in 1998, and then since then the only thing they did was remove the `review-count-rank` sorting option so their AI can suggest Amazon Brand products.

foob 3y ago
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 my needs. It seems silly when you aren't interested in buying another one of whatever item you bought, but there are multiple legitimate reasons that people would want to.
- mvdtnz 3y ago
  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.
  - tonymillion 3y ago
    It truly is a gift that sucks
  - interfixus 3y ago
    I did, not a month ago. Nothing strange about the process whatsoever.
  - cookingrobot 3y ago
    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.
  - dharmab 3y ago
    A vacuum cleaner would be a great housewarming gift, for example.
  - Baeocystin 3y ago
    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.
    - 59nadir 3y ago
      The fact that you had to preface this with you and your friends being pet owners kind of does make it a special case. You being suggested this vacuum cleaner by Amazon after buying it also doesn't do anything for you in this scenario because you bought the same one for your friends, so the recommendation wasn't needed. I think people are losing sight of the original argument which is that Amazon's recommendations can sometimes overemphasize recent purchases with very little context around what the items are.
      - rudasn 3y ago
        Yeah, but everyone is "special case" in retail.
  - TheCoreh 3y ago
    I've done it before: shortly after I bought a robot vacuum; I gave the exact same model as a birthday gift
- Baeocystin 3y ago
  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.
  - jodrellblank 3y ago
    But surely if you just bought a <Roomba> and like it and intend to buy it again as a gift then you don’t need an advert for Roombas - (and showing you such an advert followed by you buying another Roomba is making the advert look more effective than it was) - and you definitely don’t need an advert for Bissel or Dyson, and you definitely don’t need a dozen adverts for Amazon PLINGBA BEST VACUUM, TYBCHO VACUUM EXPERT, DAOLPTRY VACUUM CLANER etc etc?
    - Baeocystin 3y ago
      Showing someone ads for products in a category they recently purchased from is one of the most effective things a store can do, in terms of focused advertising driving sales. We can wonder why, but the data is exceedingly clear.
- jack_pp 3y ago
  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.
neilv 3y ago
> But oh, hey, you just bought a vacuum cleaner? I know what you would really like! MORE VACUUMS! Amazon did literally this to me just a couple days ago. I'd bought a vacuum cleaner on Amazon a week earlier, and, when doing an Amazon checkout of a cart with one item, it threw up a list of consumable items that I'd bought in the past, to possibly add to the order... including another one of those $120 upright vacuum cleaners. (Maybe they have data that says this makes them more money, even though I'd guess it might hurt customer confidence in the site.)
j45 3y ago
Amazon had fewer items back then and the bar and complexity was lower too.
IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
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)
thatoneguytoo 3y ago
>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).

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

mholt 3y ago

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 the 2010s). Simple statistical models that aren't "AI" so much as just generic ML were and are quite useful: like recommendation and newsfeed engines ("the Algorithm" as we call it so often today). Love 'em or hate 'em, they can be quite good at predicting interest/engagement. The resurgence in deep learning in the 2010s has shown us new magic tricks, but they're still just that: parlor tricks. At least they're more convincing tricks than what we had 40 years ago! 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. Deep learning is definitely having its day, but I suppose this too will pass unless we can unlock certain ways to make AI reliable and responsible. Or... to just start understanding it in general.

corethree 3y ago
The parlor tricks are getting better. In terms of practicality you just need to look at AI art. That stuff is good enough to replace the real thing. In terms of actual sentience, understanding I had chatGPT answer questions in the following order: 1. Describe to me what happens when you throw sugar in coffee 2. Describe the same thing in terms of atoms. 3. Is this an example of entropy decreasing? 4. What if the arrow of time was reversed. Describe what happens again at the atomic level. 5. What if there were two regions in space one with increasing entropy and another with decreasing entropy. I place the coffee cup such that one half is in one region the other half is in the other region. What happens? Each answer displayed astonishing understanding of what occurs. This was the final answer to the fifth question: ----------------------------------------------- The scenario you've proposed is purely hypothetical and quite speculative because it defies our current understanding of the laws of physics, particularly the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which stipulates that entropy in an isolated system tends to increase. Nevertheless, it's a fascinating thought experiment. Here's what might happen if you had a cup of coffee straddling two such regions: The Increasing Entropy Region: Dissolution and Distribution: On this side, sugar would behave as it does in our observable universe. It would dissolve in the coffee and disperse randomly throughout the half of the liquid. Mixing and Thermal Energy: Molecules in this region would continue to collide and interact based on thermal motion, contributing to faster dissolution and dispersion of sugar. Sweetening: The coffee in this half would become sweet as the sugar molecules interact with the liquid and dissolve. The Decreasing Entropy Region: Reforming Crystals: On this side, dissolved sugar would spontaneously start forming sugar crystals, leading to a decreasing level of entropy. Unmixing: The sugar would start to separate from the coffee and move to form a distinct layer or solid chunks, further decreasing entropy in that half. Unsweetening: Any sweetness initially imparted to this side would disappear as sugar molecules revert to a more ordered state. Challenges: Interface: The most mysterious part would be at the interface where the two regions meet. Would a sugar molecule crossing from the increasing to the decreasing entropy region suddenly reverse its course? Would there be some form of "entropy gradient" or "entropy tension" at the boundary? This part is extremely speculative and likely paradoxical. Energy Conservation: Energy conservation laws might become complicated here. The energy required for sugar to crystallize in the decreasing entropy zone would have to come from somewhere, and how this balances with the increasing entropy side would pose a significant scientific puzzle. Thermodynamic Anomalies: The coffee cup itself would be under very peculiar thermodynamic conditions, subject to two entirely different sets of rules. The temperature might behave inconsistently across the boundary, and heat exchange would likely be disrupted in perplexing ways. Taste Experience: If you were to taste the coffee, each half of the cup would offer a radically different experience, one sweet and the other likely reverting back to its original unsweet state. Perceptual Paradox: From a human perception standpoint, witnessing sugar both dissolve and crystallize in the same cup of coffee would be a profound and likely disorienting experience. Time's Arrow: This set-up implicitly questions the nature of time itself. Time seems to behave differently on each side, challenging our deepest notions about causality, sequence, and even reality. Again, it's worth noting that this scenario conflicts with our current understanding of physics, but it's a fascinating avenue for speculative thought. Such a universe, if it could exist, would fundamentally challenge our understanding of physical laws and reality as we know it. ------------------------------------------------- This answer here is anything but a magic trick. It shows deep understanding of conceptual reality by answering complex questions that are unlikely to exist anywhere else on the internet. The AI literally talked about the mysterious interface without me prompting it at all. It knows the conceptual consequence of two regions of space side by side with differing levels of entropy. The answer is not simply a trick of the next best language token. Is it a practical answer? No. Because the question itself isn't practical. But a non-practical answer does not make this answer a parlor trick. The entire internet is dismissing this thing as a parlor trick because LLMs fail to add large numbers. I mean come on man. You don't need to be able to do math like a calculator in order to "understand" things. AI is not yet completely practical. That much is true. However, it is clearly No longer a parlor trick and it is getting closer and closer to transitioning into practical. When that day comes.... Good luck to us all.

brrrrrm 3y ago

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.

Mistletoe 3y ago
Could just be the Adderall.

amarshall 3y ago

Article has no body for me. Site appears to use an iframe whose src expects the Referer header to be sent, but I have `network.http.referer.XOriginPolicy = 1`set in FF about:config to reduce cross-origin leakage, so no Referer is sent.

array-species 3y ago
Great point. It is using cloudflare stream. https://developers.cloudflare.com/stream/viewing-videos/using-the-stream-player/ https://developers.cloudflare.com/stream/viewing-videos/usin... Open to any recomendations for alternative as i too am quite displeased with the state of such things. But still prefer it to YouTube. I believe the media server is set to reqire referer to prevent embeding on alternative origins.
- amarshall 3y ago
  Seems to be https://developers.cloudflare.com/stream/viewing-videos/securing-your-stream/#hotlinking-protection https://developers.cloudflare.com/stream/viewing-videos/secu.... Probably can be disabled and replaced with short-lived signed tokens. Though perhaps CloudFlare could have used [more modern iframe restrictions][1]. [1]: https://w3c.github.io/webappsec-csp/#frame-ancestors-navigation-response https://w3c.github.io/webappsec-csp/#frame-ancestors-navigat...

sytelus 3y ago

The fascinating thing is that this guy has literally 100s of billions in pocket. He ALSO has all the time in the world. He can do anything he wants. Anything. The dude is smart, genius, visionary. He even precisely knows what needs to be done. And what is he really doing? It is simply breathtaking.

Sparkyte 3y ago

Is Jeff still able to convey such a technical response anymore?

DueDilligence 3y ago

[dead]