Amazon's empire rests on its low-key approach to AI

AMAZON'S SIX-PAGE memos are famous. Executives must write one every year, laying out their business plan. Less well known is that these missives must always answer one question in particular: how are you planning to use machine learning? Responses like "not much" are, according to Amazon managers, discouraged. Machine learning is a form of artificial intelligence (AI) which mines data for patterns that can be used to make predictions.