Machine Learning Guide: Practical approach for Business

Artificial intelligence is a growing field with many possibilities extending in many directions. Artificial intelligence encompasses many terms you may have heard and terms that we will be covering in this book like deep learning, neural networks, and machine learning. Sometimes we hear doubts out there that artificial intelligence will never be as good as humans are at navigating the choices and actions of other humans, but that is not always the case. Some systems are already at levels that perform better than humans, and while reading people can be hard, it’s all based on perception and cognition—two of the areas in which machine learning are continuing to expand and strengthen around.

Machine learning for competitive advantage

As there is a difference between acting as a friend and passively assessing someone’s mental or emotional state and attempting to actively change that state, machine learning systems are powerful at figuring out the problems that it should work on solving next and persuade others to work on these problems and implement the solutions the system suggests. Companies that are thriving have embraced the trend of putting machine learning to work for them in all of the places that are appropriate, and in all of the places where the system can effectively integrate into the business. Those who cannot seem to let go of the past will find themselves at a competitive disadvantage to those who are willing to accept machine learning.

Artificial Intelligence, the most important technology of our era

It has been stated in The Harvard Business Review that “artificial intelligence, especially machine learning, is the most important general-purpose technology of our era. The impact of these innovations on business and the economy will be reflected not only in their direct contributions but also in their ability to enable and inspire complementary innovations. New products and processes are being made possible by better vision systems, speech recognition, intelligent problem solving, and many other capabilities that machine learning delivers.” Similar to Charles Darwin’s survival of the fittest theory, those companies that adapt with the time will thrive and continue to see opportunities to use machine learning. In this book, we will discuss what machine learning is, how you can apply it to your business today, and how it can be used to quickly and accurately use the systems to trade stocks.

Machine learning for business

No longer a niche subfield of the rapidly growing field of computer science, artificial intelligence has been used for years by tech giants Amazon, Google, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Understanding algorithms involved in machine learning is starting to become a much sought after business skills that can be applied to a business to identifying problems, giving feedback on outputs, and looking for algorithmic success based on the right set of objectives. Could machine learning be useful to you or your organization? Ask yourself if the answer you want is to be agreed upon by ten of your friends or colleagues. If a group of humans can’t come to an agreement on if something is right or wrong, it is hard to expect a computer to be able to reliably take our judgment calls and calculate them into some kind of statistical pattern.