The new business of AI and how it’s different from traditional software
I worked on the recommender and personalization stuff for a midsized fashion retailer. It took me about 2 years to figure out most of the work done by our ML & big data teammates was pure fiction.<p>I believe, but have no conceivable way to prove, that all of the easy wins have been won by the first movers.<p>It's weird. I have almost irrational optimism about the unbounded potential for deep learning, ML, big data, and so forth. Amazing, almost magical, stuff like KP figuring out that Vioxx was killing their patients once they had enough data and asked the right questions.<p>But I'm also completely skeptical about using these techniques for culture and entertainment and advertising. Methinks that ceiling has already been hit and there's nothing on the horizon.<p>Too bad. I really wanted our internal version of Stitchfix to actually work. Now I'm not sure it's possible. Or that we (or maybe just me) were asking the wrong questions.