Jeff Bezos talks business principles, AI and machine learning, plus space

By Tian DuBelko

(Image Credit: Edited YouTube Screenshot)

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos stopped by the annual Internet Association gala last week and spoke about a wide range of topics, including Amazon’s business principles, artificial intelligence, as well as the company’s machine learning strategy.

Bezos even briefly professed his love for space and the goals of his Blue Origin space company during his fireside chat with Internet Association CEO Michael Beckerman. Join us below for a recap of their talk.

Customer Obsession

Bezos said customer obsession, something also addressed in his letter to shareholders, was the primary factor behind Amazon’s distinctive business approach. It’s how the company has managed all of its different ventures, “from producing original content at Amazon studios to Amazon web services, where we sell startups and enterprises computing infrastructure, to the thing that most people know about, which is our consumer offering where we deliver things in little brown boxes.”

Bezos said that while there are many ways to orientate a business, it’s customer obsession instead of competitor obsession or technology obsession that has had the biggest hand in all of Amazon’s continued success.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

But Bezos eyes especially lit up when the conversation shifted to the topic of AI and machine learning.

“It is a renaissance,” he said. “It is a golden age. We are now solving problems with machine learning and artificial intelligence that were in the realm of science fiction for the last several decades. And natural language understanding, machine vision problems, it really is an amazing renaissance.”

Thanks to the rapid progress within the last 10 years, Bezos thinks that soon more businesses could reap the benefits of machine learning and AI.

“Machine learning and AI is a horizontal enabling layer,” he said. “It will empower and improve every business, every government organization, every philanthropy — basically, there’s no institution in the world that cannot be improved with machine learning.”

There’s no institution in the world that cannot be improved with machine learning.

A Glimpse Into the Future

Amazon is leading the way in pushing the capabilities of machine learning with their Echo & Alexa Devices. For example, to function as a voice assistant, Alexa depends on natural language processing, which is the ability for computers to comprehend human speech.

“I’m thinking of things like Alexa and Echo, our voice assistant, I’m thinking about our autonomous Prime Air delivery drones,” Bezos said. “Those things use a tremendous amount of machine learning, machine vision systems, natural language understanding and a bunch of other techniques.”

But Bezos says that the true value of machine learning is reflected in Amazon’s less showy products and goes unnoticed. “Things like improved search results. Improved product recommendations for customers. Improved forecasting for inventory management. Literally hundreds of other things beneath the surface.”

Blue Origin and Space

Bezos also addressed his space venture, Blue Origin, speaking briefly about the company’s mission and goals.

“We are flying a suborbital tourism vehicle and we’ll start taking people up in 2018,” Bezos said. “Blue Origin’s vision is for millions of people to live and work in space. My personal hope is that I live long enough to see that kind of dynamism in space. I want to see a whole economy and entrepreneurs in space that I got to witness over the last 20 years on the internet.”

Despite his enthusiasm for space, Bezos acknowledged the roadblock for aspiring space entrepreneurs, saying that the “price of admission” is too high. “The beginning entry level is a few hundred million dollars, so you’re not going to get two kids in their dorm room doing something in space. Whereas that’s literally what happened to Facebook.”

You can watch the whole conversation here:

http://bit.ly/2qSWKZh

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