“If you’re not doing AI today, don’t expect to be around in a few years,” says Japjit Tulsi, VP of engineering at eBay, “It really is that important for companies to invest in — especially commerce companies.”
Tulsi will speak next week at MB 2017, July 11 and 12 in SF, MobileBeat’s flagship event where this year we’ve gathered more than 30 brands to talk about how AI is being applied in businesses today.
eBay is working to stay ahead of the curve, now that machine learning and AI is growing in importance. It has focused on the potential of AI for the past ten years. The company’s approach to AI has been built on a platform of research and development, Tulsi says, plus decades of insights and data about consumer behavior, making even the simplest applications incredibly valuable.
As an example, Tulsi points to the merchandizing strip at the bottom of every item page, which shows similar items that a shopper might be intrigued by, and often leads them down a positive rabbit hole of shopping and buying.
“It’s machine learning and AI at the very simplest level, and we’ve seen a tremendous amount of return on investment on that.” Tulsi says.
However, evolving that into more sophisticated personalization has proven difficult, say Tulsi, because of the limitations on computing power in the past 10 years. Then in 2015 or so, processors hit the event horizon, with game-changing advances in GPUs and the dedicated hardware used for deep learning.
Massive calculations can now be made swiftly and cost-effectively. New algorithms are increasing the speed and depth of learning. And deep learning can now go broad across billions of data points with thousands of aspects and dozens of layers.
eBay has no shortage of data. The company manages about 1 billion live listings and 164 million active buyers daily, and receives 10 million new listings via mobile every week.
So another big bet was born: Investment in AI technologies like natural language understanding, computer vision, and semantic search, to drive growth and, Tulsi says, “reinvent the future of commerce.”
The future looks pretty much like…
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