Recommender Systems: The Unsexy AI That Actually Works
Everyone is obsessed with AI agents right now. Autonomous systems that plan and execute tasks. Multi-step reasoning. Tool use. The whole package.
Meanwhile, half the apps you use every day run on recommender systems. Netflix telling you what to watch. Spotify building your playlists. Amazon showing you products. YouTube deciding your next video. These systems move billions of dollars and nobody talks about them anymore.
I spent last year deep in recommender systems for my computer science degree. Built a few from scratch. Learned what works and what breaks at scale. The best part? If you've worked with RAG applications, you already understand half of it. The concepts overlap way more than you'd think.