Ask HN: Beside chatbots, what are the best application for AI in ecommerce? AI is a trending technology right now. There are a ton of companies applying AI in different industries like autonomous cars and chatbots. What do you think are the best application for AI in e-commerce and who is doing it well? |
No, there are companies marketing AI in those industries. AI as most people think of it doesn't yet exist. The most famous example is the massive fraud that is/was IBM's Watson[1].
It's common for companies to say they're AI when they're actually doing text-search, crowdsourcing work from real humans, or doing statistical regressions on a data set.
Even autonomous driving is not exactly AI because it can't react well to novel situations. Waymo is way ahead of the others because it has massive amounts of training data, not because it's AI is so much better.
If true AI existed, Google and Apple would certainly have it, and your phone's voice assistant wouldn't be laughably stupid 80% of the time. Facebook might also have it, and their chatbot initiative would've been more successful.
> What do you think are the best application for AI in e-commerce and who is doing it well?
This is like saying what is the best application for being smart in e-commerce. It's so broad that it's impossible to answer. Theoretically AI can do tasks that previously only humans could do, but it can do them faster and cheaper.
That's applicable to literally everything in e-commerce (and any other services industry).
1. https://www.rogerschank.com/fraudulent-claims-made-by-IBM-ab...