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AI Space

Amazon Launches re:MARS Event Focusing on AI, as Second Stage To Invite-only MARS (geekwire.com) 32

Amazon's annual invitation-only event on machine learning, automation, robotics and space -- known as Mars -- has become a high-tech highlight for insiders, featuring billionaire founder and CEO Jeff Bezos riding a giant robot or walking a robot dog. From a report: Now a wider circle of tech leaders can get in on a spin-off experience called re:MARS, which is due to make its debut June 4-7 at the Aria Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. The event will shine a spotlight on the leading lights and cutting-edge advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning, Amazon said today in a blog posting.

"We're at the beginning of a golden age of AI. Recent advancements have already led to invention that previously lived in the realm of science fiction -- and we've only scratched the surface of what's possible," Bezos said. "AI is an enabling technology that can improve products and services across all industries. We're excited to create re:MARS, bringing together leaders and builders from diverse areas to share learnings and spark new ideas for future innovation."

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Amazon Launches re:MARS Event Focusing on AI, as Second Stage To Invite-only MARS

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  • I'd like anyone in the know to name 3 things that AI is successfully doing today somewhere in or around our daily lives. Activities that require thinking or reasoning ability and that were once performed by humans, but no longer.

    FWIW I want AI to succeed, but I see a lot of talk and, frankly, close to 0 implementation anywhere I look. So, perhaps, I am looking in all the wrong places?

    • All I know is that when I login to Amazon, it suggests things to me THAT I HAVE ALREADY BOUGHT. How stupid is that? Yeah, I just bought a soldering iron, why would I want to buy another of the exact model? I can understand if it started to suggest things like solder, or an Arduino, or a book on electronics, but it invariably suggests what I already bought. But yeah, AI is right around the corner.
      • by ugen ( 93902 )

        Yep, same here. And if I booked a hotel somewhere, I'll see ads for hotels in that same place for a month. Already booked - what's the point? :) It gets funnier. My children are going to middle school now, but since I used to buy baby stuff back in the day, Target (and, occasionally, Amazon) keep offering me more baby items - formula, diapers, you name it. Wouldn't it be obvious that they need to apply a timeline to these types of purchases and offer school supplies after 6 years or so, and then whatever it

        • Exactly. If AI actually worked, wouldn't you use it for basic stuff in your multi-billion dollar business? Improving the suggestions on Amazon would be very useful and profitable. That is my entire point to AI nutters: if there was AI, why are AI "researchers" using it to play Chess and Go? Why is Siri, Cortana, Alexa so dumb? Could it be that real applications of the technology aren't so easy?
      • Let me tell you how good amazon's AI is - it suggested that we set up a subscription to auto-order a mortar and pestle each month.
        • Maybe the system is smart enough the know the junk mortar and pestles they sell break regularly. Maybe it is smarter than I thought! I take it all back.
    • I'd like anyone in the know to name 3 things that AI is successfully doing today somewhere in or around our daily lives. Activities that require thinking or reasoning ability and that were once performed by humans, but no longer.

      NLP (Natural Language Processing): Be it a Voice Assistant(Alexa, Siri) or Voice Prompts while calling customer service.

      Automatic Assistance in Cars: Be it Tesla's automation; or more generic automatic braking assist and lane following. It is still sensor input being evaluated for dangers and a computer taking an action that a human would, but usually faster.

      Advertisements (Deep Learning): Someone I know walked into a store recently, didn't buy anything, and got a physical mailing the next week thank

      • None of that is AI. You are just describing algorithms and computer programs. Everyone acts like this is new stuff. Computer vision and NLP have been around for decades. Processing data is not AI, unless you classify any program as AI. And based on the junk mail I get, and the poorly targeted ads, the AI systems you describe need a lot of work.
        • "AI" generally just means machine learning these days. And all of those are machine learned, statistical model-driven systems, not algorithmic systems. While things like SVM or Naive Bayesian classifiers have been around for years, DNN-based systems that perform well on much harder tasks that require large amounts of data to learn have only existed since 2011 or so.

      • by ugen ( 93902 )

        I am sorry, but none of the things you mentioned (with possible exception of computer vision) have anything to do with AI, not now and not 30 years ago.
        You lost me at "a vast network of interconnectedn-ess that is arguably an AI system." Sorry.

        • AI == machine learning. All of these are machine learned systems. AI doesn't mean thinking magic. And yes, we do actually have DNN-based models that do simple reasoning now. Look up the Facebook bAbI challenge, for example, or question answering systems like FlowQA.

      • Glorified table lookup is NOT AI no matter how many times you keep spamming it.

    • by SigIO ( 139237 )

      Actually, AI in one form or another has been around for a while. Back in the 80s, my father sold (LISP?) software to American Express, that they used to identify patterns of charges. From these patterns they could discern legitimate transactions from fraudulent ones. I believe it was called the 'Artificial Reasoning Tool' from a company called Inference in California.

      Nowadays, it's somewhat common to get an email or text messages from your credit card provider signalling you of potential fraud. The fact of

      • That is just statistical processing. It isn't intelligent at all.
        • by SigIO ( 139237 )

          I disagree. AMEX had to feed this LISP program real world transactions to train it, and it had to be tailored to individual spending patterns to be useful. Also, perceptrons and weights were implemented in LISP long before they were in Python/Keras.

          Certainly, this application was very focused, and could in no way be considered 'general AI', it was a heck of a lot smarter about detecting fraud than an individual.

    • by Kjella ( 173770 )

      I'd like anyone in the know to name 3 things that AI is successfully doing today somewhere in or around our daily lives. Activities that require thinking or reasoning ability and that were once performed by humans, but no longer.

      Once it's happening everybody just says it's an algorithm. For example look at the face/eye tracking in modern cameras, if know I'd struggle a lot of if somebody asked me to write that function. Same with speech recognition, it has other uses too but it's rarely a simple end user product. I know a system that flags certain data for manual processing/review, they of course have hard coded rules too but they also run a more general algorithm that looks for outliers and unusual combinations. I suppose in the f

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