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by ocdtrekkie 3475 days ago
Obviously the goal of ML in this would be that feeding it enough data about users who buy coffee tables would eventually teach it that you probably don't want another coffee table (because who buys two coffee tables in a row?), but might want to buy say... end tables or other living room furniture in a matching style to the coffee table you just bought.

Not saying it works, but that'd be the goal.

1 comments

Disclaimer: I know nothing about ML.

Would the standard models used allow for the fact that humans could, after buying a coffee table, choose to click on the coffee table in anticipation of then getting suggestions for similar furniture. Presumably the machine sees that the end goal of those continually clicking the same item is actually to arrive at similar items .. but wouldn't it be an obvious optimisation for Amazon to set the ML up to already look deeper than the first page reached.

I have a similar thing with Amazon, I don't know how you're supposed to access the bestseller list for a product type. I just know that if you search a product and follow related products that you eventually get a "#5 in ObscureProduct" tag and that tag takes you to the list of the top-10 models of ObscureProduct available. That sort of learnt navigation must play havoc with a suggestion algo (but IMO would be very easy to fix with just a link for any specific enough item to the 'top 10 in this category').