It sounds like SF, doesn’t it? The idea that the machines are able to learn from past experiences and solutions to previous problems and just find the best course of action in the time a human never could. We often hear about machine learning and the research done, as well as future expectations. However, did you know that there are aspects of our lives where machine learning is already in place? Here are a few.
Recommended Content
If you go on YouTube and search for a particular subject, or person, the algorithm of the website will start recommending similar content and articles, in the hopes of generating more traffic from you. It does this by looking at your previous videos and searching for videos that other users watched along with your preferred content. It is not just YouTube, every major platform uses machine learning to come up with more content you may be interested in.
For example, if you are looking at video clips featuring the late night show hosts, like Stephen Colbert, the algorithm will likely recommend Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon, and Trevor Noah, as these are liberal talk-show hosts. On the other hand, if you search for Jesse Waters, the recommendations will include Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson.
Tell me, who or what protects you from spam? That’s right, machine learning. If you move an email to your spam folder, your email provider will try to find distinctive similarities between that email and all the incoming email. So, if you are not interested in receiving emails about vacation offers, you will not even see the dozens of emails coming your way that promote supposedly great deals.
Virtual Assistants
Google Assistant, Siri, Cortana, and Alexa all use machine learning to predict your needs. It is an amazing experience, though some people might find it creepy that the room temperature is just right, or that reminders feature our favorite news articles.
Recommended Contacts
Like with the recommended content, machine learning tries to connect you with people in same or similar circles. Facebook provides you with ‘people you may know’, based on the mutual friends or interests you have, while LinkedIn will provide a similar service for the work domain – if you work in a similar industry, or you searched through a few companies while trying to change careers, the algorithm will be affected by all of that.
Customer Support Chatbots
Some people hate chatbots. This is usually because you might have an unusual problem and need an alive person to deal with it. The machines can only act on previous problems, so it can be somewhat irksome if your computer is on fire, and the bot recommends you turn it off and back on again.