What does it do?
Machine learning is a form of artificial intelligence, it makes it so that programs or applications become more accurate over time at predicting outcomes without specifically being programmed for this. The way this works is that algorithms are used to interpret historical data as input and predict values.
Machine learning is important as in today’s society there is an ever-growing volume of data and with access to this data and having a system to process this data becoming cheaper and more powerful along with how affordable data storage is. These all mean that how quickly data is processed and analyzed is forever improving and machines are able to get faster more accurate results, no matter how large the volume of data is. Organizations use machine learning to identify ways to make profit or to analyze unknown risks.
As far as what can be accomplished with machine learning today some examples are in the financial services industry, banks are using machine learning to help identify insights in data as well as to prevent fraud. Data mining is a key component of machine learning and it is also used to identify high risk clients and also determine signs of fraud.
In the Health-Care system, machine learning is being used in real time, to monitor a patient's health. This is done through wearable machines and sensors. These machines assess patterns and major issues which can lead to more accurate diagnoses and treatments.
The government uses machine learning for things such as cyber threats. Through machine learning it is becoming faster than ever to find threats and defend against them resulting in safer cyber-security. Another example of machine learning in the government is to analyze and predict traffic congestion, a study from 2016 compared the predictive value of a machine to the actual traffic trends and it predicted over the 90% accuracy range resulting in the government having the knowledge of when and where to implement road improvements and traffic control measures to ease congestion.
In the sector websites are able to analyze a customer's buying history to create a personalized shopping experience. The result of this is things such as targeted adds for items that you may have searched or have previously bought and are on target to where you would typically repurchase this item as well as to notification of items that you have looked at or purchased going on sale.
The machine learning industry in 2019 was valued at around $8.4 billion, by 2027 this is estimated to grow to around $117 billion by 2027, some technology that is being heavily invested in over the next few years are things such as quantum computing.
Quantum computing allows simultaneous multi-state operations which result in faster processing of data. In 2019 Google’s quantum processor in 200 seconds, this task would have taken the world fastest super computer over 10,000 years to complete.
Quantum machine learning will improve data analysis as well as have better insights. These performances will enhance businesses abilities to obtain faster more accurate results. As it stands there is currently no commercially ready quantum computer available however, it is being heavily invested in and funded. It is estimated that in the next few years this technology will be available.
Automated machine learning is continuously evolving with the speed and processing power of computers continuing to grow, over the next few years machine learning is expected to be more available to any kind of business as well as being able to predict trends and analyze patterns in data faster and far more accurately.
What is the likely impact?
As discussed in shorter detail above machine learning will heavily impact day to day life of almost every single industry in the world, there is no doubt about it machine learning is going to shape the future. The impact that machine learning is going to have will wildly vary from things such as medical diagnosis and treatments of patients all the way to agricultural benefits from things such as analyzing weather patterns and trends and implementing measures to shield crops from the effects of the weather.
There is no doubt about it machine learning will shape the future, the impacts of it will affect many, if not managed the development of this technology problem it will cause a massive divide between the rich and poor making many lower-class jobs redundant for example there is a robot being developed by Tesla which is being described as “capable of doing all the jobs humans don’t want to do”, in other words replacing all menial jobs, things such as customer service, stocking shelves even tasks such as farming vegetables as an example. This technology is a few years away but with 10-15 years of development into this technology the possibilities are endless.
The outlook for the future with machine learning is definitely one of ease, the idea of having technology to do all our tasks for us sounds amazing, however the ability to monetize these robots is a scary thought thus creating further expanding the rich vs poor divide. If the technological advancements are managed in a structured way as to benefit society to its fullest this technology will undoubtedly be one of the greatest things for our civilization, so long as it is developed in a way that it is to service the needs of people and bring convenience and ease to our everyday lives.
How will this affect you?
Machine learning over the next 3-5 years will bring a great level of convenience and ease to everyday lives. Things such as medical diagnosis and treatment will become much more direct and accurate, we will have more information than ever at our fingertips, governments will be able to extrapolate data from trends on numerous things like the aforementioned traffic, deployment of emergency service and even health and welfare.
As far as the elder generation goes, the grandparents or even older parents it can be assumed that this is the extent of how machine learning will impact their lives; however, the impact on the younger generation, those being born today is uncertain with major corporations using machine learning to generate the time it takes to complete a task and also determine things like cost cutting, with the development of technology to replace the everyday tasks it's possible to say that part-time jobs as a teenager may no longer exist.
For the current younger generation this technology presents great opportunity. Opportunity to cash in on the development of this technology as well as to learn a vital skill in the understanding of how it works as well as to contribute to the development of machine learning. It will also impact every day activities as we have seen with the tesla auto pilot mode of a car things such as driving to work are likely to be replaced by being driven to work by auto-pilot.
To summarize machine learning is a great technology that is going to be monumental to the future, it doesn’t come without concerns and issues but if handled correctly in its development it will make for amazing quality of life improvements and assistance in every day activities.
