1-minute Machine Learning Masterclass
Machine learning is not a new cool thing to throw into the buzzword bowl. It’s the most powerful technology our civilization has ever seen. Game-changing enough to currently shape large parts of your life without your knowledgeable participation. And quite certainly already in control of your future.
Simpler algorithms are woven into everyday life. They’re not just in your smartphone and laptop but in your car, your house, your appliances and the toys you buy for your kids. Algorithms schedule flights and then fly the airplanes. Algorithms run factories, trade and route goods, cash the proceeds and keep the records.
If every algorithm suddenly stopped working it would be the end of the world as we know it.
Further down the line NSA’s algorithms decide if you’re a potential terrorist. Climate models decide what levels of carbon dioxide we can allow into the atmosphere to ultimately survive in it. Stock-picking models drive the economy more than most of us.
You can’t control what you can’t understand. That’s why you need to understand machine learning. As a professional, a citizen and a human being.
You already understand that data is being collected. Your scrolls and clicks are recorded, as are your pulse and health and all the other data sets we happily provide in exchange for a tailored experience everywhere.
At some point these datasets grow too big for any programmer to manually work with. Amazon can’t neatly encode the taste of every single customer and Facebook does not have the ability to write a program that will chose the best updates to show each and every user. That’s when they turn to machine learning.
Traditionally, the way to get a computer to do something was to write down – in painstaking detail – an algorithm explaining how to conduct a specific task. Machine learning algorithms are different because they figure it out on their own.
Learning algorithms are matchmakers; they find producers and consumers for each other. Cutting through the information overload. You get the best of two worlds; the vast choice and low cost of enormous scale, with the personalised touch of the small. Learners intelligently reduce the choice to something a human can manage.
Who wouldn't want to have The Matrix or Pulp Fiction recommended to them? Hold on. We’re just getting started.
Google’s algorithms largely determine what information you find, Amazon’s what products you buy and Match.com’s who you date.
The last mile – choosing from the options presented – is still yours but 99.9% of the selection was made by them.
From an individual perspective it’s mind blowing. From a corporate one it’s the largest business opportunity since the invention of money. The race is on and whoever learns fastest wins.
In the same way that a bank without a database can’t compete with a bank that has one, a company without machine learning can’t keep up with the one that uses it. While the first company’s experts write a thousand rules to predict what its customers want, the second company’s algorithms learn billions of rules, a whole set of them for each individual customer.
It’s as fair as spears against guns.
Machine learning is a cool new technology and it does have a place in the buzzword bowl. But that’s not why most of the world’s leading businesses and executives embrace it. They embrace it because they have no choice.
You should embrace it too.
This text is based on notes taken while reading Pedro Domingo’s The Master Algorithm. The book explains how machine learning really works – without spending all the time on the heavy math. I can’t recommend it highly enough.