Machine Learning is a subset of artificial intelligence and usually associated with business and government. Most of the big names like Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and Google are heavily into ML since it is so clearly the present and the future. How, one wonders, does it help to keep you out of trouble? Read on.
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Email spam
About a decade or so ago it was common for inboxes to be flooded with junk and spam mail. Thankfully, Google and others became smart and implemented machine learning. Machine learning helps the program not only detect spam using established rules but also to create new rules as it goes along. Your inbox is now cleaner, filled only with mails you want, not with misleading spam emails that could land you in trouble.
Image recognition
People snap selfies and upload their images to dozens of sites without much thought. Such images could easily be misused by impersonators on social media, and then you would be the one left holding the baby. Images can be morphed and misused in several ways or used straightaway. It is good to know that machine learning is making great strides in image recognition and should it becomes necessary you have machine learning to thank for setting matters right. Facebook, for instance, may send an alert that you have registered elsewhere based on your profile photo. Now look in another direction, the future and how image recognition with ML is put to good use.
A prime example is Google’s self-driving car. Once it becomes a reality, it is predicted to be safer than human-driven cars in avoiding accidents. Forget about the futuristic car. Even in everyday life, you can rely on Google Maps to give you precise directions on which route to follow and avoid traffic-laden roads that would delay your travel. Think of home automation. High-end systems feature face recognition technology for access. Accuracy is derived from machine learning that is put through its paces feeding on millions of records.
Weather, climate, disasters
Weather forecasts and disaster predictions are becoming more accurate with heavy use of machine learning. What this means for you and everyone is warning of storms or heavy rains in certain areas. Keep yourself informed, and you can avoid such areas or times when unusual weather occurrences are expected to happen.
Healthcare
This is another prime area in which ML is proving its worth. Imagine the elderly or people with health problems such as people with diabetes, people with kidney trouble or cardiovascular issues. They can wear smartwatches that interface with their smartphones that, in turn, are connected to health care service providers. Sensors can detect abnormalities like low or high blood pressure, impending organ failure or changes in heart rhythm and automatically alert the patient as well as healthcare services.
Banking
Health is not the only area where you may land yourself in trouble but find ML coming to your rescue. Banking and finance is another area. Instances of credit card fraud are so common, but only the person whose account has been charged with a false transaction knows just how troublesome it is. Now, thanks to ML, such attempts may be detected while in progress and the card blocked due to anomalies in behaviours. You may have to get your card reactivated, but that is far less trouble than an empty bank account.
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