from Hacker News

Jeff Bezos on AI (1998) [video]

by _lnoc on 8/22/23, 2:31 AM with 134 comments

• by mholt on 8/22/23, 3:39 AM

  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.

• by slimsag on 8/22/23, 3:25 AM

  "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.

• by sytelus on 8/22/23, 6:40 AM

  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.

• by amarshall on 8/22/23, 4:44 AM

  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.

• by brrrrrm on 8/22/23, 4:32 AM

  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.

• by Sparkyte on 8/22/23, 7:47 AM

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