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by neovialogistics 844 days ago
Scale. Providing accurate recommendation algorithms for thousands+++ of people across thousands+++ of data items is surprisingly expensive in compute and electricity. For any one user, sure you can do whatever you like. When you divide your resources across your userbase the prices get larger and larger.
1 comments

Sam Altman said something about Instagram which is interesting. He said at midnight, the quality of the recommendations is higher because few people are on the platform.

Does it mean at peak hours IG switches to a simpler algorithm?

Otherwise, why would the quality of a RS drop during those hours?

I bet their recommendation algorithms use some kind of iterative refinement to keep recommendations "fresh" and that at midnight it's just done with lower latency.
Did Mr Altman happen to elaborate on what time zone he had in mind? ;)