198: Building AI Search and Customer-Enabled Fine-Tuning with Jesse Clark of Marqo.ai

This week on The Data Stack Show, Eric and John chat with Jesse Clark, the Co-Founder & CTO of Marqo.ai. During the episode, Jesse discusses the evolution of AI and machine learning in enhancing search capabilities, particularly in e-commerce. The group explores the concept of vector search and its advantages over traditional keyword-based methods. The conversation also touches on the challenges of searching for specific items, like car parts for Land Cruisers in Australia, due to the complexity of part numbers and interchangeability. They delve into the difficulties of dealing with unstructured data, such as information locked in PDFs and manuals, and how Marqo is developing AI to search and incorporate this data into relevant results. The episode covers the technical aspects of customizing embedding and language models for better search outcomes and the potential of language models to connect different data modalities for advanced search experiences, the future of interfaces, the role of new technology in search experiences, and more.

Highlights from this week’s conversation include:

• Jesse’s background and work in data (0:35)

• E-commerce Application for Search (1:23)

• Ph.D. in Physics Experience Then Working in Data (2:27)

• Early Machine Learning Journey (4:35)

• Machine Learning at Stitch Fix (7:28)

• Machine Learning at Amazon (10:39)

• Myths and Realities of AI (13:49)

• Bolt-On AI vs. Native AI (17:26)

• Overview of Marqo (19:46)

• Product launch and fine-tuning models (23:02)

• Importance of data quality (25:38)

• The power of machine learning in search (32:02)

• Future of domain-specific knowledge and product data (34:08)

• Unstructured data and AI (37:19)

• Technical aspects of Marqo's system (39:42)

• Challenges of vector search (43:27)

• Evolution of search technology (48:15)

• Future of search interfaces (50:43)

• Final thoughts and takeaways (51:53)

The Data Stack Show is a weekly podcast powered by RudderStack, the CDP for developers. Each week we’ll talk to data engineers, analysts, and data scientists about their experience around building and maintaining data infrastructure, delivering data and data products, and driving better outcomes across their businesses with data.

RudderStack helps businesses make the most out of their customer data while ensuring data privacy and security. To learn more about RudderStack visit rudderstack.com.