Airbnb Builds a Second Neural Network to Diversify Listings - The New Stack

Homestay broker Airbnb found that the key to creating diversity with its machine learning algorithms is to have one neural network for standard learning and another to specifically diversify the results. Diversification means, in this sense, increasing the variety of options that a user sees when looking to book a stay. This concept took years to develop because it went directly against the company engineer's original core belief, that the probability of someone booking a listing could be determined independently of the listings themselves. Airbnb published a technical paper and a blog post detailing the quiet shortcomings of that approach: that a single neural network produces precise but homogeneous set of results. To increase diversity, Airbnb engineers underwent the process of creating and iterating on additional neural networks.