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from the now-let's-work-on-human-intelligence dept.
A recent Wired article tells us about the progression of the Amazon product recommendation algorithm.
Amazon helped show the world how machines can learn. As far back as the late ’90s, the company’s online retail site would track every book, CD, and movie you purchased. As time went on, it would develop a pretty good sense of what you liked, serving up product recommendations its code predicted would catch your eye.
It wasn't rocket science. It was an algorithm. But it worked. And in the years since, the field of so-called machine learning has evolved in enormous ways, with the likes of Google, Facebook, and Microsoft training enormous networks of machines to identify faces in photos, recognize the spoken word, and instantly translate conversations from one language to another.
On Thursday, Amazon unveiled a similar machine learning service, pitching it as a way for any business to use the AI tech the company has spent years developing inside its own operation. Known as the Amazon Machine Learning Service, it’s designed for software developers “with no experience in machine learning,” AWS head Andy Jassy said on stage at a mini-conference in San Francisco.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by davester666 on Saturday April 11 2015, @11:27PM
yeah, both amazon and ebay are stupid. yesterday, I buy hour-meters for some equipment I have. today, I get an offer to buy one for 5% off. and it keeps happening with most stuff I buy.
I'll even get offers to buy another one of what I just bought for MORE than what I paid for it. I bought a new fuel pump for my truck for $25 [retails locally for about $500] from Amazon. Next day I get an offer to buy another one for only $110. I understand the pricing, as from the fedex label inside the box, Amazon had received the pump from the manufacturer a year ago, and they just were dumping it because they didn't want to stock it anymore and just sold it for the cost to fedex the box to them [plus shipping costs to me].