
How Amazon Rebuilt Itself Around Artificial Intelligence - jonbaer
https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-artificial-intelligence-flywheel/
======
thisisit
One thing which is sorely missed in such discussions is the employee efforts.
Out of all the companies, Amazon's hours seems to be the worse of the lot.

That said, I really like Bezos (or Amazon) that they took risks on thing like
AI, AWS etc. I find that lot of companies lack that insight. Even when they
are not doing great, I routinely find executives hem and haw about their "core
business". Most of these companies end up scraping the bottom of the barrel
for profitability and keeping the company afloat for couple of years more.

~~~
vadimberman
An insightful comment that had to be made - I wonder why people downvoted it.

Indeed, Amazon is probably the best and the worst about the modern tech: an
ambitious leader, who manages to create paradigm shifts in areas where he is
not a subject matter expert; and a sweatshop-like environment where the low
ranking employees are treated like oompah loompahs.

~~~
GabrielF00
As an Amazon employee, I tend to think Amazon's reputation is overstated. Some
teams definitely have very high operational loads, but in general my hours
have been comparable to friends in similar tech companies and certainly less
than friends in industries like medicine, management consulting, etc.

It's very strange to describe Amazon (at least engineering roles) as a
sweatshop considering how well compensated employees are.

~~~
naturalgradient
Well compensated? Amazon pays significantly below other mega cap tech
companies, and as a PhD student in machine learning with a lot of friends
interning and applying for jobs I can confidently say Amazon is nobody's first
choice due to low salaries and working conditions.

I'd rather say I am amazed they get anyone great working for them because it
really is clearly and painfully obvious that almost everyone would rather work
for Google, Facebook or Microsoft regarding machine learning.

Have first hand knowledge of salaries. Amazon offers 30-50% less than other
top tech companies for machine learning. There is literally no silver lining
or upside as far as I can tell.

In that context, it does not matter if Amazon pays more than <other job> in
<other industry> or treats employees better than <other company> in <other
industry>.

~~~
Analog24
This is selection bias. You have first hand knowledge of what Amazon offers
new graduates with little or no industry experience (and yes, PhD students
fall into this category). The compensation for more experienced employees is
substantially higher.

~~~
naturalgradient
"The compensation for more experienced employees is substantially higher"

Citation needed. Higher than compensation for experienced employees at
Google/Facebook? I am not even disputing Amazon pays more later, I am saying
Amazon never pays top tier AND treats employees badly AND has no perks or
particular benefits to make up for it, so nobody who has the option (that I
know of) wants to work there.

~~~
Analog24
Every company pays more later, I was trying to say that the pay gap between
other companies disappears for mid+ level positions.

Also, they do not treat employees badly. Are there cases where certain
managers treat their employees poorly? Of course, you can find the same
anecdotal examples at company of sufficiently large size. Since the infamous
2015 NYT article, employees are treated very well on average. For perks, if
you're referring to free catered meals then, yes, Amazon lacks there. But how
about working in downtown Seattle instead of some random suburb outside of San
Jose?

Finally, you ask for a citation about my claim while offering none for your
own. My source: I work here so I actually have first hand experience.

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vonnik
I have to say I'm disappointed by the mild boosterism that runs through Steven
Levy's coverage of large corporations. For example:

> Amazon’s product recommendations had been infused with AI since the
> company’s very early days,

Really? Is it the kind of AI that impresses people today? Or was it just
collaborative filtering. This narrative that "things were good and now they're
getting better" is common in corporate communications, but shouldn't be part
of neutral coverage.

Or this:

> “But they have really come on aggressively. Now they are becoming a force.”

> Maybe the force.

That's absurd. When you look at where Google has taken TensorFlow, AlphaGo and
Waymo, and compare it with really any other company in the world, it would be
hard to anticipate that Amazon would become _the_ force.

Amazon was forced to adopt an outside machine-learning framework, MxNet, as
its own when its in-house toolkit didn't get traction. That's in stark
contrast to Google, again.

I'd say Amazon's main advantage is in its ability to sell infrastructure and
platforms that enable developers to build apps -- which in this case will help
productize ML in various ways. But I would not call it _the_ force in AI.

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melling
Amazon’s Alexa is a big win for the company. It will directly increase
shopping on Amazon. Integration with music and Prime Video impact Apple

It might soon be the most popular, and perhaps best, consumer voice assistant:

[http://h4labs.org/amazons-alexa-blindsided-apple-and-
google/](http://h4labs.org/amazons-alexa-blindsided-apple-and-google/)

~~~
dominotw
> It will directly increase shopping on Amazon.

Is there any evidence to this speculation?

Linked article has a link that just points to the sales of the device itself
as proof.

~~~
melling
Sure:

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2018/01/09/adobe-e...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2018/01/09/adobe-
echo-google-home-sales-doubled-in-2017-and-22-shop-by-voice/)

Amazon is definitely working on improving this.

“Alexa, what are my deals?”

[https://www.amazon.com/b?node=16924225011](https://www.amazon.com/b?node=16924225011)

Sounds like they will be investing significantly more into Alexa:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-says-
al...](http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-says-alexa-beat-
expectations-2018-2)

~~~
bduerst
That doesn't say there's an increase in sales, just that people buy over VUI.
It's very likely that buying over VUI cannibalizes web and mobile sales.

~~~
gordon_freeman
yes there's also this surprise element attached to it. You won't know if you
have ordered a right item in right qty until you receive it or you immediately
open the orders tab in your phone to make sure you ordered the right item.

~~~
bduerst
Or when you say, "Alexa, order me a Chromecast" and it ships you a firestick
instead.

------
scarface74
I've heard just the opposite from someone I know at Amazon. I've heard that
they still gather a lot of their data by doing Sql queries.

~~~
Eridrus
SQL is highly underrated by engineers.

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randcraw
FYI, unless Ghostery enables Adobe Dynamic Tag Manager, this article will be
blocked by Wired... made invisible.

~~~
banterfoil
[https://outline.com/ffNk2r](https://outline.com/ffNk2r)

