IT question 6

Selling on Amazon.com

A case base reasoning system is a type of “expert system.” It attempts to match the facts on hand to a data base of prior “cases.” When a case-based reasoning system finds one or more in its data base that closely matched the facts at hand, it then evaluates and reports the most common outcomes. Given enough cases, such a system can prove very useful. Even better, if a case-based system automatically captures cases as they occur, then it will become a powerful tool that continually fine-tunes it results as it gains experience.  Amazon.com relies on just such a system to refer books to its customers. Like many  e-commerce sites, Amazon allows visitors to search for, buy, and review books. Amazon.com takes its database interactivity a step further. Given a particular book title, its case-based reasoning engine examines all past sales of that book to see if the customers who bought that book to see if the customers who bought that book share other book purchases in common. It then produces a short list and presents that list to the user. The overall effect approaches that of a sales clerk who says “Oh! If you like this book, then you’ll really like reading these as well.” However, Amazon’s system has the experience of hundreds of millions more transactions than the most wizened and well-read sales clerk. Equipped with this information, a customer may consider purchasing additional books; better information increase the customer’s confidence in the purchase and encourages sales.

1.       What is the source of expertise behind Amazon’s online book recommendation?

2.       How do you feel about online merchants tracking your purchases and using this information to recommend additional purchases?

3.       What measures protect consumers from their government obtaining their personal shopping histories maintained by Amazon?

4.       Although Amazon doesn’t share personal information, it still capitalizes on the shopping data of its customers. Is this ethical? Should Amazon offer its customers the right to opt out of this information gathering?

5.       What obligations do organizations have to secure your private data from unauthorized access?

Part II

Online classified web pages that are accessible to others online have a great potential for security, privacy, and fraud assault.

•How are the companies in this business protecting their users from such assaults, and how can these companies improve the security of online classifieds?

•What are some of the limitations or dangers you see in the use of AI technologies such as expert systems, virtual reality, and intelligent agents? What could be done to minimize such effects?

Each answer should be a paragraph in length (at lease 7 full sentence), grammatically sound, and free of spelling errors. APA  6^th edition with reference .