eBay executive Lauren Wilcox said eBay sees unique opportunities to develop AI-powered customer tools and services but said the company must implement them safely while meeting its community’s needs. It’s actually her job to make sure eBay does so – she is Senior Director of Responsible AI at eBay.
In a recent blog post, she outlined key principles eBay adopted to adhere to its commitment to advance technology responsibly and ethically. In addition to complying with regulatory frameworks, she said eBay actively ensures there is human oversight throughout the development, launch, and monitoring of AI uses.
eBay has already launched AI tools for sellers – and next month, it will add language in its privacy policy to bring it in line with its practices by adding the following provision:
Use of Artificial Intelligence or AI-Powered Tools
We may use artificial intelligence or AI-powered tools and products to improve our Services, to offer you new or enhanced features, a customized and personalized experience, to provide you with enhanced customer service, and to support fraud detection.
One of the principles Wilcox cited was to build trustworthy AI systems that are reliable, safe and secure:
“At eBay, we rigorously test AI technologies to prevent unauthorized access and malicious use, and employ the most protective measures possible for any confidential data that are used to train or operate AI systems and models. Our goal is to ensure that our AI systems are designed to perform as they were originally intended, to respond securely in various conditions of use, do not pose safety risks in unexpected situations or adverse conditions, and to be secure and resilient, in accordance with the highest standards in information security.”
Another principles states that eBay strives to be transparent to end users about its use of AI. “In some cases, we accomplish this by disclosing information about the type of AI being used within the experience itself, and in other cases, through broader disclosure of our use of AI generally, based on the stage of its lifecycle.”
Presumably that means eBay discloses when customer service responses are AI-generated – eBay CEO Jamie Iannone informed Wall Street investors that it had begun using AI to replace certain customer support agents, as we reported on the EcommerceBytes Blog.
You can read about eBay’s AI principles on the eBay corporate blog.
“Senior Director of Responsible AI”
Ahahahahah! Now there’s a lofty title!
So far, my experience with AI has been a bust. Lack of understanding and simplistic answers suggest that some online “AI” applications are nothing more than redesignating old BOT software as “AI”. I noticed that eBay now includes the term “AI” in policy “decision” emails. For example: “This determination was made using automation or artificial intelligence.” The statement suggests that lack of understanding by humans can be overcome by labeling the result as “AI enhanced” or vaguely implying that thought went into the result. Is the objective to solve problems or convince users that they should accept zombie-quality decisions because they are labeled “artificial intelligence”.
I am looking for real intelligence, not the artificial kind.
I fear that if eBay uses the universe of listing in the Stamps category to develop a model of “good” listings, the result will be very bad, perhaps lawsuit worthy. There are so many bad listings in the stamps category, that looking at a few bad ones will trigger an avalanche of bad listings clogging up the space the title and description. Until eBay started attempting to “steer” customers away from good listings, I had no idea how many bad listings lurk on eBay. To be clear, I consider listings to be bad if they are grossly overpriced, offer forged or altered stamps, fail to describe faults, mendacious boilerplate, or ineffective and ugly images. How will AI separate the good from the bad?
I might use closed AI to help create listing titles, but only if limited to the universe of my sold listings saved in SixBit. The AI objective function should favor quality listings over fleecing unwitting buyers. Unsing AI with an unknown objective function is not safe.
To funny. Responsibility is not something ebay is known for. Betting that they have no clue what it means.
Some overpaid seat warmer probably found it in the waste basket.
Responsibility and Ebay should never be used in the same sentence. EBAY HAS PROVEN AGAIN AND AGAIN THAT THEY CAN’T BE TRUSTED. THEIR GREED GETS IN THE WAY.
the cesspool reponsible and transparent? no the cesspool is neither
Lauren Wilcox, you are telling lies
PLEASE dont say the words eBay & responsible in the same sentence! (its not April Fools yet)
Ebay has never been responsible for anything. This is no different.