On Thursdays, we dive deep into one of the freshest research papers or technology frameworks that is worth your attention. Our goal is to keep you up to date with new developments in AI to complement the concepts we debate in other editions of our newsletter.

💥 What’s New in AI: Inside Merlin, the Platform Powering Machine Learning at Shopify

Some of the best inspiration for modern machine learning (ML) architectures can be found in the work of technology incumbents like Facebook, Uber, Airbnb, LinkedIn, and several others. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, given that these companies are exposed to some of the most complex ML scenarios in the current market. In the past, architectures such as Uber’s Michelangelo or Airbnb’s Bighead have become reference points for modern ML solutions. Last week, Shopify joined this group by disclosing details about the platform powering its ML workflows.

Code name Merlin, the platform is optimized for three key goals: ...