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What Is Machine Learning?

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Andrew Smith
What Is Machine Learning?

Machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) have started to gain traction over the past years, and today, nearly every emerging startup is trying to leverage these technologies to attract funding and disrupt traditional markets. And it’s true that companies using “AI” and “ML” as buzzwords in their pitch are more likely to attract external investments than their counterparts working with traditional and mainstream tech.

But still, apart from all this hype around machine learning, how applicable is it for solving real-life, everyday problems and when does it make sense to use it instead of/together with traditional software programming? Let’s start exploring the issue by describing the various types of machine learning and its basic principles.

Machine Learning vs Traditional Programming

To better understand how machine learning works, let’s look at how it differs from traditional programming.

First of all, machine learning does not replace traditional programming, and a software developer will never use machine learning algorithms to create a website. Usually, machine learning and artificial intelligence complement standard programming methods rather than completely replace them. For example, ML can be used to build predictive algorithms for an online trading platform, while the platform’s UI, data visualization and other components will be implemented in a mainstream programming language such as Ruby, Python, or Java.

The rule of thumb: only use machine learning when traditional programming methods are not effective/feasible for solving a particular problem.

To better exemplify it, let’s consider a classical machine learning problem of exchange rate forecasting and see how it can be solved with the help of both techniques.

In this article, we looked at three types of machine learning: supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement. Each of them has areas of practical application in real-world conditions and its own distinctive features.

Supervised ML is by far the most developed and applicable form of machine learning to date. To implement it in practice, you need a task that can be formulated as a problem of classification or regression analysis, as well as a sufficient set of labeled data. Now there are dozens of ready-made classical algorithms for machine learning, as well as various Deep Learning algorithms for solving more complex problems, such as image, text, and voice processing.

On the other hand, unsupervised machine learning is much less applicable in real life. While associative algorithms help in analyzing data for retail and online stores, clustering and dimensionality reduction are more commonly used as an auxiliary tool for supervised ML.

Today, a lot of research is being done to see how neural networks can help recognize complex patterns in unlabeled data. Potentially, they can lead to a breakthrough. Having only some arbitrary data, the unsupervised learning algorithms may be able to detect some non-trivial dependencies or even complex laws in some way.

Reinforcement ML is a very promising tool for solving problems that only a human being can handle. Now, the main research is concentrated around ML usage in various types of games. The main obstacle to using RL in practice is the high complexity of the real world.

This article is just a starting point in our discussion about different types of machine learning and how they can supplement traditional software programming. At 8allocate, we strive to share our knowledge and experience gained through working with various ML and AI methods on clients’ custom development projects. I plan to review different ML and AI tools and libraries in my next article, so stay tuned with 8allocate!

The text above is a summary, you can read the full article HERE!

 

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