[Wayne 962]

Twelve Kittens in a Ferrari - Wayne's explanation of how AI actually works, and why I think it's still a bit of a "magic trick"

Hi everyone. I’ve had this conversation with dozens of people – I thought I would write a small essay / article on how AI works (from my understanding of it) and to also explain my rationale for why I think it’s still a parlor trick (albeit, a great illusion at that). Let me know your thoughts!!!

Background – I've got two degrees in engineering from MIT – started dot-com PelicanParts.com (European automotive parts on the Internet) where I programmed all the shopping carts, back-end inventory systems and built the heuristic search engine from scratch.

Let’s start off with me explaining how our current AI models work, but in a dumbed-down fashion using old tech as an explanation. About 20-30 years ago, Amazon built and developed a feature that we all take for granted these days – “Customers who bought X also bought Y.” Back in 1999, this was ground-breaking technology. When I saw this, I told my computer programmer, “we need to get this on our PelicanParts.com site asap.” He mentioned it would take about six months to do, at which point I said “hogwash” (or something less kid-friendly). I proceeded to go home that weekend, worked on it until 2AM all weekend, and by Monday morning, we had our “Customers who bought X also bought Y” feature implemented in the shopping cart. It turned out to be easier than expected. Here’s how I did it (yes, this is applicable to the AI discussion).

For those who know something about SQL databases, this is easy to follow. For those who don’t, think of a SQL database like a large filing cabinet with individual folders inside. To implement the “Customers who bought X also bought Y” feature I simply did the following:

1- I selected all unique part numbers in our part number database. Basically a master list of everything we sell.

2- For each individual part number in the master list, I took that part number and looked at our data. Let’s pretend that the first part number was for a rod bolt. I selected all orders (from the past two years or so) that had that rod bolt part number on it. I now had a order master list of all order numbers that contained that individual part - the rod bolt.

3- Then I selected *all* of the line items on *all* of the orders that contained that rod bolt part number. This results in a big list of items all jumbled together. But, of course, the commonality between all of these order numbers is that each one contained that part number I was looking for (the rod bolt).

4- Finally, I just sorted the big list and summed up how many times each individual part number appeared in the list (this is easy for the computer to do - Excel will do this easily as well). Obviously, the rod bolt was tops on the list, but I was interested in the ten next part numbers that appeared on orders where a rod bolt was ordered. These I took and then wrote down in the “part number record” for the rod bolt next to other attributes like price, weight, description, etc. That way the shopping cart could simply select the part number record and read what the top ten parts are that were associated with the rod bolt.

Not surprisingly, it works really well. The number one recommended part associated with a rod bolt is – not surprisingly – a rod nut. Literally no one orders one without the other (well, hardly ever). Interestingly enough, the system exposed some really weird correlations that I couldn’t have guessed either. Something like people replacing their brake master cylinder might also order a car cover (random example – I don’t remember the exact weird combos that came up). At first I thought I had errors in my code, but sure enough, there were a bunch of people who ordered brake cylinders and car covers!