Re:Customers who liked this Recommendation Engine may also l...
by andrepd on Thursday July 12, 2018 @08:31PM
(#17519708)
When your economic system incenctivises shipping the biggest amount of crap you possibly can, this is what you get. People happily going to extreme efforts to optimise for this target only, even if the side effects are what you mentioned, plus pollution, plus unhappiness from constant bombardment by hyperoptimised ads, plus depletion of resources, plus...
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Re:Customers who liked this Recommendation Engine may also l...
by krastanov on Thursday July 12, 2018 @10:27PM
(#17520100)
You are severely misrepresenting what this work is about. As I mentioned in a sibling comment, this work is exciting for purely intellectual reasons. The applications to Amazon's business model is a side note.
Re:Customers who liked this Recommendation Engine may also l...
by technologia on Friday July 13, 2018 @10:15AM
(#17523134)
I concur, its difficult to get funding for this type of research without having a tangible way to benefit your potential benefactors.
From personal experience, I've had to work on numerous applications that I didn't really care for but provided me with the funding to actually pursue my research.
On another note, the subject matter Ewin & Professor Aaronson are talking about is pretty complex even for the average CompSci person; I'd wager if there was no mention of a corporate entity or real-world example this article would be met with so many questions about its applications to those same real-world problems.
Rant concluded :P