On April 12, 2017, Spencer Soper writes on Bloomberg Technology:
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CEO’s annual shareholder letter promises ‘much more to come’
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Machine learning enhances products ‘beneath the surface’
The Robots Making Your Online Orders Faster
Amazon.com Inc. is embracing artificial intelligence to deliver goods more quickly, enhance its voice-activated Alexa assistant and create new tools sold to others through its cloud-computing division, Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos said in his annual shareholder letter.
Changes ushered in by artificial intelligence and machine learning will help the companies that embrace them and put up barriers for those who don’t, the world’s second-richest man wrote in a 1,700-word letter released Wednesday.
Bezos repeated familiar themes, such as the need to operate a business like it’s always “Day 1” to keep a startup mentality and the ability to act quickly on limited information to stay ahead, what he calls “high-velocity decision making.” His emphasis on artificial intelligence and machine learning was the most concrete indication of areas in which the e-commerce giant will continue to invest.
Machine learning is the science of getting computers to act without being programmed, and is used in autonomous cars, speech-recognition and internet search engines. The technology has influenced high-profile projects at Amazon such as drone delivery, its popular Echo voice-activated speaker and the new cashier-less Amazon Go convenience store unveiled late last year in Seattle, Bezos wrote.
“But much of what we do with machine learning happens beneath the surface,” he wrote. “Machine learning drives our algorithms for demand forecasting, product search ranking, product and deals recommendations, merchandising placements, fraud detection, translations, and much more. Though less visible, much of the impact of machine learning will be of this type — quietly but meaningfully improving core operations.”
Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud-computing division, will offer affordable tools so clients can incorporate artificial intelligence and machine learning into their own operations. Such tools have already been used by to detect diseases and increase crop yields, Bezos wrote.
“Watch this space,” Bezos said. “Much more to come.”
Artificial intelligence (AI) is undeniably the trend amongst business corporations seeking to improve product and service quality, reduce operational costs, and reap more profits for their OWNERS.
Unfortunately, the corporations growing the economy are narrowly OWNED by the tiny wealthy capital asset ownership class. The system, which requires past savings, ensures that ONLY those individuals who are able to save substantially or who have inherited large sums will OWN the future.
If we are to truly create an economic democracy wherein EVERY child, woman and man is empowered to acquire personal ownership stakes in the successful businesses growing the economy, we need a new system paradigm to free economic growth from the slavery of past savings. We need to enact monetary reform and the Capital Homestead Act (aka Economic Democracy Act).
The Capital Homestead Act is a comprehensive national economic strategy for empowering every American citizen, including the poorest of the poor, with the means to acquire, control and enjoy the fruits of productive corporate assets. This long-range agenda involves major restructuring of our tax system and our Federal Reserve policies to lift unjust artificial barriers to more equitable distribution of future corporate capital and faster growth rates of private sector investment.
It would shift primary national income maintenance policies from inflationary wage and unproductive income redistribution expedients to market-based ownership sharing and dividend incomes. The Capital Homestead Act’s central focus is the democratization of capital (productive) credit. By universalizing citizen access to direct capital ownership through access to interest-free productive credit, it would close the power and opportunity gap between today’s haves and have-nots, without taking away property from today’s owners.
Support Monetary Justice at http://capitalhomestead.org/page/monetary-justice.
Support the Capital Homestead Act (aka Economic Democracy Act) at http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/, http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/capital-homestead-act-a-plan-for-getting-ownership-income-and-power-to-every-citizen/, http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/capital-homestead-act-summary/ and http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/ch-vehicles/.
