Machine Learning Strata

What should everyone know about machine learning?

1) Machine learning means learning from data; AI is a buzzword. Machine learning lives up to the hype.

2) Machine learning is about data and algorithms, but mostly data. There’s a lot of excitement about advances in machine learning algorithms. But data is the key ingredient that makes machine learning possible.

3) Unless you have a lot of data, you should stick to simple models. Machine learning trains a model from patterns in your data, exploring a space of possible models defined by parameters.

4) Machine learning can only be as good as the data you use to train it. The phrase “garbage in, garbage out” predates machine learning, but it aptly characterizes a key limitation of machine learning.

5) Machine learning only works if your training data is representative. Machine learning should warn that it’s only guaranteed to work for data generated by the same distribution that generated its training data.

6) Most of the hard work for machine learning is data transformation. Most of your time and effort goes into data cleansing and feature engineering — that is, transforming raw features into features that better represent the signal in your data.

7) Deep learning is a revolutionary advance, but it isn’t a magic bullet. Deep learning has earned its hype by delivering advances across a broad range of machine learning application areas.

8) Machine learning systems are highly vulnerable to operator error. When machine learning systems fail, it’s rarely because of problems with the machine learning algorithm. More likely, you’ve introduced human error into the training data, creating bias or some other systematic error.

9) Machine learning can inadvertently create a self-fulfilling prophecy. In many applications of machine learning, the decisions you make today affect the training data you collect tomorrow.

10) AI is not going to become self-aware, rise up, and destroy humanity. A surprising number of people seem to be getting their ideas about artificial intelligence from science fiction movies. We should be inspired by science fiction, but not so credulous that we mistake it for reality.

- courtesy Quora.