Machine Learning Examples – A motivation for beginners

Introduction

People who are exploring machine learning as a field to shift their careers or people who are just curious about why there is such a buzz of machine learning all over places often have one burning question in their mind – what all possible things can one achieve with machine learning. Well, the short answer is  – that the possibility is endless and one’s creativity is the only limit. In this post, we will motivate beginners with machine learning examples that are in popular use in today’s world

In the end, we will also look at a few areas where machine learning is being used in the most creative and fun ways possible.

• Also Read – Introduction to Machine Learning

We wont indulge in the technical aspects of machine learning and keep it just a simple read for beginners.

Machine Learning is Integral part of our daily life

Yes, machine learning is influencing our day-to-day life and perhaps many people are not even aware of this. The key reason for this penetration is Google. Google is an integral part of one’s life and people are knowingly or unknowingly getting driven by machine learning. Let us have a look at a few examples –

1. Google search engine, now processes over 40,000 searches per second on average and billions of searches daily and yet throws relevant search results within seconds. These numbers are mind-boggling in themselves.
2. Did you ever freak out at how google gives such accurate autocomplete prompts in the search boxes as if it is reading our minds about search context?
3. How the hell, google maps predict which route will be faster and shows such an accurate ETA of reaching the destination.
4. Ever noticed that spam folder in your Gmail and did you ever open it to see so many spam mails indeed.
5. And the wonderful google translator, which is becoming better and better with time.
6. Youtube suggestions, which keep people hooked to youtube for endless hours.

Yes, I think you are getting my point now, it is the machine learning that is behind all the magic of Google.

Now let us turn our head to other areas – ever realized how Amazon or Netflix is so good at recommending you what you may like, yes that is an act of machine learning.

Machine learning has also entered your smartphones – next time when you unlock your smartphone with the face recognition feature do remember this point or the way the camera detects the face while taking photos, it’s all machine learning at play.

And my personal favorite is “Friends you may know” feature by Facebook – I met a person the other day and the next day his name started coming in my friend recommendation, this happens quite often and always freaks the hell out of me.

Machine Learning in other industrial uses

Now that we have made you realize how machine learning is influencing your regular life so closely, let us now understand some other popular use cases for which industries are adopting machine learning across the world.

1. Banks are using machine learning to detect frauds, pass loans, and maintain investment portfolios.
2. Hospitals are using machine learning to detect and diagnose diseases with more accuracy than actual doctors.
3. Companies are running ad campaigns targeted to specific customer segments using machine learning
4. Companies are now managing their supply chain and inventory control using machine learning.
5. Enterprise chatbots are now the next big things, with companies adopting them to interface with customers
6. Online retailers are building their recommendation systems with more accuracy than before using the latest advancements in machine learning.
7. Self Driving Cars are the latest fascination that has caught the imaginations of companies like Google, Uber, and Tesla who are investing heavily into this future vision using next-generation machine learning technology.
8. With the rising industry interest in Blockchain, Web 3.0, and Metaverse, machine learning technologies are going to play a huge role there also.

These are just a few of the popular use cases and are just the tip of the iceberg. As I told you at the very beginning, machine learning can be used in the most creatives ways to solve social, economical, and business problems. The possibility is just endless.

Machine Learning – The Artist

This is the coolest part- with so many advancements in Deep Learning a subset field with machine learning things are getting to the next level of reality. Now we are able to produce artwork using machine learning. These are some of the astonishing artworks.

Deep Dream

Deep Dream is a program written by Google that enhances the picture to produce images that looks dreamlike tipsy or hallucinating.

Fake Face Generation

Yes, you heard it right. The beautiful model-looking faces below do not exist and have been generated by machine learning’s imagination.

Neural Style Transfer

Neural style transfer is a cool technique in which a style of an image or artwork is transferred to another image.

Music Composer

The below music was generated by a machine learning system but after listening to it there is no reason to believe that it was not generated by humans!!

The Author

This machine learning read a lot of literature from Shakespeare and then produced a piece of text that looked not only meaningful but also Shakespearean

The Film Writer

Sunspring is a movie whose screenplay was written by a machine that was fed with hundred of Sci-fi movie scripts. And it then wrote a story which was filmed by moviemaker Oscar Sharpe.

Machine Learning – The Gamer

Yes, Machine Learning is turning computers into gamers who are not only playing and winning Atari games for fun but are also beating humans in some of the games that seemed like an impossible feat a few years back.

Playing Atari Games

This is just one of many examples where the computer learns to play an Atari game using machine learning.

Playing Mario

This is a very fun video in which we can actually see what is going on inside machine learning model’s mind while it learns to play Mario. Check it out –

Defeating humans in Jeopardy game show

In 2011, IBM’s machine learning system Watson participated in a popular TV game show Jeopardy – which competed and defeated the world’s best Jeopardy human champions.

Defeating Human in the game of Go

In 2016, Deepmind’s machine learning system AlphaGo played Go with Lee Sudol (the best player and champion of Go) and defeated him. This feat is considered to be one of the greatest achievements in the field of machine learning.

Machine Learning – The Robots

This is the ultimate goal of machine learning, to build a self-aware artificial intelligence encapsulated inside a robot. We are still quite far to reach there, but still, the progress and research are very impressive, to say the least. Here are a few examples.

MIT Cheetah

MIT is very well known for its investments in robotics research. Over the year they have built so many robot prototypes. This is the video of one of their prototype – Cheetah and this will also leave you in awe.

Sophia

Meet Sophia, a humanoid robot who became the first robot to be granted country citizenship (by Saudi Arabia) shows facial expressions, strikes conversations, follows faces, makes eye contact, and gives opinions – and needless to say, it is all machine learning at the very core of it.

In The End…

As I told you earlier, all things covered here are just the tip of the iceberg and the exact application of machine learning is very huge.

I hope, this was a good read for you as a beginner to understand various applications of machine learning and a great motivation to pick up machine learning yourself. Remember once again – with machine learning, the creative possibilities are limitless.

Before I end, let me leave you with another interesting link to some cool machine learning projects submitted at the Experiment with Google platform to keep you more amazed with this world of machine learning.