i helped build this! it's not what i do anymore, and i don't want to go into too much detail, but the TL;DR is that, yes, just walk out (JWO) really does use machine learning models to identify which products customers are picking.
the non-obvious challenges of working in this space are that you have to deal with real world constraints that you just don't have to think about in 100% cloud based software. hardware goes down! internet connections go out! electricity goes out! how much processing can you do in store vs out of store?
that's just the tech in the store. what about humans? humans are now in your programming state moving shit around. in-store associates miss-stock items. kids do kid shit. people don't place things back exactly where they found them.
Then you have interesting distributed problems: how do you handle late data? what should be a massively parallel problem is really a graph of interactions that have to be resolved in just the right order so you can generate an accurate receipt.
and you know what's crazy? the vast majority of the time it works! exactly how they say it does: with machine learning models.
This video from a year ago goes into more engineering depth than promotional videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5t6aYhj6pU
the non-obvious challenges of working in this space are that you have to deal with real world constraints that you just don't have to think about in 100% cloud based software. hardware goes down! internet connections go out! electricity goes out! how much processing can you do in store vs out of store?
that's just the tech in the store. what about humans? humans are now in your programming state moving shit around. in-store associates miss-stock items. kids do kid shit. people don't place things back exactly where they found them.
Then you have interesting distributed problems: how do you handle late data? what should be a massively parallel problem is really a graph of interactions that have to be resolved in just the right order so you can generate an accurate receipt.
and you know what's crazy? the vast majority of the time it works! exactly how they say it does: with machine learning models.
bonkers.