Machine learning and human creativity

It was back in 2001, when Steven Spielberg’s ‘Artificial Intelligence’ was released. The film tells story about a human look-a-like mechanical boy who considers itself human. He can feel the world around him, make decisions, and watch dreams. At that time, not many of us thought that out future will be drastically dependent on AI based machines and such machines will turn out to be real nearly two decades later. Fast-forwarding to present, while complete human look-a-like robots are still under development phase, the ability of a machine to make decisions is been widely utilized in all major technological sectors such as production lines, e commerce, social networks, and heath care. This is made possible by the development of more sophisticated computers and algorithms that can compute large amount of data (Big data) and provide analytics based on the patterns in the data sets.

The terms artificial intelligence and machine learning are common buzz words in technical domain today. Whether we are related to technology as a professional or are an end user, we touch machine learning interface quite often than known in our day to day life. Consider Facebook, our feed is based on analytics made my algorithms about what we like to see, how we react on such posts, and how often we comment. Another example is Google chrome browser. Based on our usage, Google is able to suggest ads. If you search for a shoe on Google chrome, and browse Facebook later, your Facebook page will show a shoe advertisement beside your feed.

Considering these examples, it is important to acknowledge the power of big data and machine learning. Machine learning utilizes the feed data to detect patterns and adjust related programs. The process involves initial input of labelled data up to a limit where machine can understand the pattern and work autonomously afterwards. The related benefits are bringing down tedious repetitive jobs and gaining valuable insights from the large data sets. This also highlights the fact that machine learning can perform tasks more precisely and at a higher pace than an average human being.

While there are infinite favorable possibilities of utilizing such technology, it also brings around a fear of losing human jobs to machines. But is this fear valid? Historically, industrial revolution is considered as the dawn of the machine era. When machines were first utilized commercially on large scales it was feared that they will take away human jobs. They did, but in a positive sense. They brought down hard labor jobs such manual harvesting of the crops, manual forging of the metals, and gave us time and energy to utilize our skills in more creative and research based tasks.

Even today, when machine learning can compute data sets and reveal insights, the decision-making pertaining to this data can only be performed by humans. For example, an algorithm tracks usage pattern of a user on an e commerce website. It will compute how many times in a day user login, what are the specific items he has looked for, how many times he has bought those search items, what items are in his wish list, and much more. The same algorithm can track several thousand such users and generate a pattern, such as what items are bought most frequently and at what time of the day are maximum logins. Now it is up to humans to decide how to utilize this data. One can come with an idea of offering discount on items that are not brought frequently, or offering discount at particular hours of the day. Historically, in the absence of machine learning technology any such e commerce company might have deployed workforce for these computations, but with machine learning same workforce can now be utilized in more creative work, say developing more of such algorithms.

The above scenario depicts that machine learning by its nature can only add to human creativity. It is as sophisticated as Tony Stark’s Jarvis from the Iron-man movie. It helps Tony in researching new technologies quickly, offering solutions of problems and scheduling automated tasks such as fabrication of a suit component using robotic arm giving Stark ample time to use his creativity in developing something new and something better.

Machine learning algorithms are helping scientists at NASA in analyzing planetary data, asteroid trajectories faster than alone done by a group of humans, spearing ahead research process and decreasing research time by decades. Same machine learning technology is also helping automobile industry to analyse driver’s driving pattern to develop much safer roads, cars and even autonomous vehicles. Machine learning has provided us with infinite possibilities ranging from practical speech recognition, effective web search, and a vastly improved understanding of the human genome. This all has been made possible because we as humans now have more time to innovate and push our creativity further beyond traditional limits

Being fearful about new technologies such as machine learning is natural considering sudden job cuts in the past decade, but if carefully realized, these job cuts were in the areas that became obsolete. Having said that, it is very important for any professional to be future ready. Machine learning will not take away all the jobs, it will surely reduce the work force required to perform them. For individuals, it is important to keep themselves updated with changes and trends in the technology and look out for jobs that utilizes creativity more than repeat-ability.

Not every new skill to be learned require a full-time diploma or degree that costs both time and money, short duration courses are a better approach to enhance them. These courses are designed specifically based on the level of the participant ranging from beginner to skilled professional. Machine learning courses covers all the major aspects for present and future technological trends enhancing creativity and innovation skills. This will help in learning the most effective machine learning techniques, data-mining, and statistical pattern recognition, and gain practice implementing them and getting them to work for your creativity.