Machine Learning and Why Your Company Should Embrace It

Machine Learning is taking over across the globe. It’s now extremely important for your business to be data mining. There’s a very good chance that your business will be struggling to stay competitive in the near future without it.

Here we’ll be touching on what machine learning is, what machine learning is used for, where it’s used most, and the effect it has on the workforce.

What Is Machine Learning?

So what is this ‘Machine Learning’ you’re hearing more and more about? Well, to sum it up quickly, it’s artificial intelligence. Code is written for what people do naturally. Things like natural language processing, doing deep learning, and processing massive amounts of data. With the data that’s learned, forecasting and modeling can be harnessed. This can be used to help a company map demand for their products and services. It can provide a competitive edge when done properly.

Algorithms can sort, store and analyze data into meaningful results for a company. These results can help them decide whether to increase production, focus on customer service, or create something entirely new. Take a look at 6 facts about A.I. here for more on this subject.

Automation of Tasks

An important aspect of machine learning is the automation of tasks. Mundane, repetitive tasks carried out by humans can often be prone to error. Let’s face it, we all get tired of doing the same thing over and over. As machine learning crunches through data and all the various outcomes, it learns what the best results are. The task will be continually tested for better results, but will allow for those best results to shine through.

Why do we want automation of tasks? The top 3 reasons are speed, cost and efficiencies. A machine learning program can evaluate a task much faster than the average person. The accuracy is far greater than a human’s. This also lowers a company’s cost for doing everyday tasks like building widgets. The efficient process is strengthened over time and becomes more and more cost effective.

Where is Machine Learning Currently Harnessed?

The use of machine learning is often found in healthcare, data security, self driving vehicles, fraud protection, and even universal translation. For healthcare, machine learning is able to look at results of things like blood work, disease symptoms, and effectiveness of medications. Work that was typically done by doctors can now be done by machine learning across the globe.

In data security, machine learning can see when attacks are being made on your personal accounts like Facebook, Google and others. It can tell when someone tries to log in from a different region of the world than they normally do. If someone in the Philippines logs into your account and you’re normally logging in from Kansas City, the account can be locked.

Tesla, Uber and others are using machine learning to drive vehicles. They record driving speeds, lane accuracy, time of day and stopping distances. This data is crunched and shared among the other driver-less cars to make self driving vehicles much more safe and reliable.

Financial institutions utilize machine learning to watch all of your transaction data and look for anomalies. When something comes through out of state, out of country, or in large amounts, they are ready to notify you. This allows you to be aware of potential fraud.

Thanks to machine learning, there are even devices that can translate any language as you hear it into your native language.

Workforce Changes

One of the biggest questions many are asking is; will this make some human jobs obsolete? There is a chance that some of the more menial labor will become obsolete. Cars will likely be completely built by computers and driven by them too. There are huge cost savings for a company when the human element is replaced with a machine.

The data crunching ability of an accountant or other analyst may even become unnecessary for the most part. Machine learning programs can do this fairly easily. Artificial intelligence will eventually rewrite itself and continue to hum along with little need for maintenance. Possibly the new jobs will be people doing maintenance work on the moving parts of a machine. Only time will tell where this may lead.

One trend seems to be evident, though. If you have not yet begun to mine data, you may be missing out on huge opportunities. This is especially true if you are a large-sized business. Data Scientists are being sought out by most large companies to analyse and mine huge data sets. Staying competitive in the marketplace is crucial and machine learning helps give you that competitive edge.

Conclusion

We’ve briefly reviewed what machine learning is and how it can help your company. The accuracy, speed, and cost efficiencies all contribute to why more companies should embrace it. Machine learning also allows for a company to be more efficient, forecast sales, and identify the needs of their customers. Start the conversation about machine learning and how it can help your business with us at Flint Hills Group!