Cool Applications of Machine Learning in Real World

If you are following Machine Learning or Artificial Intelligence, you might know that most of the data generated in the last 3-4 years and this makes Machine Learning and Artifical Intelligence the hottest job of the 21st century. Machine Learning is not only improving Business Processes and decision but also used in the background to impact our everyday lives of human beings.

But What is Machine Learning? In general, we can define Machine Learning as science where we give machines especially computers an ability to learn to make a decision from data and all that without being explicitly programmed. The more the data we gave as an input, the more accurate or precise the prediction or output will be. Input data is available in structured form(in proper format i.e. in rows and columns) and unstructured form(i.e in text format like emails, images etc.). So to build its a tedious task for a Machine Learning Engineer to deal with unstructured data and consume more than 80% of their time in getting data in required shape.

The use of Machine Learning varies from business to business. Say for example Banks use Machine learning or Artificial Intelligence for fraud detection, Tech companies use for voice assistants that include Google, Microsoft, Amazon etc. Social Networking Websites like Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter uses ML or AI to know more about customer behaviour to show them relevant ads.

Here, in this post, we will share some cool applications of machine learning that you see or interact on a daily basis.

Social Media – In today’s world, people who have access to an internet they are for sure use any of the social media website or Platform including Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, Google Plus etc. All Social Media Platform collects data in both structured and unstructured form like status, image your post on it, what you like and share or tweet. To be precise Machine Learning and Artifical Intelligence is surely an integral part of all these websites. They use ML and AI for different reasons and requirements and below I am trying to cover a few:

• To better customize your news feed and show news or articles which are important to you
• To recommend similar news articles, pages, groups based on your previous likes and behaviour
• Use your location to show targeted ads of business which are serving near to the area you are living. Also, use location to enhance security and notify you if your account is opened from a different location other than your regular one
• To enhance the security of your personal data or account like images. For example, Facebook uses ML to track images on your behalf and notify you when someone post picture that includes you so that no one can use your picture without your permission

Financial Business – Financial Business including banks, share market broking firms etc integrate machine learning in their business to better understand the business and customer behaviour. Integration of Machine learning models in their product allows them for quicker and more effective decision-making.

• Bank uses ML for fraud detection, churn analysis, to get an idea about the product that their customers like the most and predict based on their views recommend them policies or products with some offers. Also, ML helps them to predict whether an individual is eligible for a loan or if the loan is granted whether they will be able to pay their loan on time or not
• Companies like Experian, FICO, CRIF generate a credit score for an individual based on their data that includes past purchasing or spending behaviour i.e payment history, the amount they owe, length of history etc. This credit score used by banks as important criteria to decide whether to grant a loan or not to a particular customer.
• Share market broking firms can possibly predict and forecast how the market will perform in future based on the historical data.
• Nowadays financial business including banks started integrating AI in the form of chatbots as customer support in their website where chatbots interact with customers when no live executive is present. They extract basic information from the website or database like balance in their account, last five transactions etc. and present it to the customers. As we know machine learning algorithms keep performing better depending on the amount of data fed to them so we can say as the time advances and data grows, these chatbots will learn and become more intelligent and in future possibly could replace human beings from the first level of customer support.

Health Care Business – A lot of research is still going on using Machine learning and artificial intelligence in health care business but the future is looking promising with products that are already in the market and for sure they have a huge impact on healthcare. All business including pharmaceutical companies, Health checkup service providers etc. are planning to integrate and take advantage of the ML technique. As the population of the world is growing the demand of doctors, lab technicians are also increasing and this will surely put a challenge in front of everyone. This is where Machine Learning or Artifical Intelligence can help humans. For example,

• Consider a job of radiologists where they have to look more than a 6-8 billion of CT scans all over the world to identify anomalies in patients
• What if a Machine learning algorithm can make a prediction about the disease that causes the death of an individual and helps doctors to find it during the early stage when it’s completely curable
• Or say based on your other health parameters like Blood pressure, Cholesterol, BMI etc. can predict the chances of having heart disease before it reaches an alarming position.

So researchers, data scientists, doctors and Machine Learning Engineers are collaboratively working to integrate the benefits of Machine Learning and Artifical Intelligence into Healthcare Business.

Retail Business – Retail Business is one of the key sectors who integrated machine learning models in their businesses and still finding ways to improve customer experience. Amazon established itself as a global e-commerce company followed by Walmart which recently acquired Flipkart in India to give a toe to toe competition to Amazon and I personally believe right now Amazon is leading in all sorts of areas whether it’s about customer satisfaction, innovation or implementation. If Walmart has to catch up and wants a serious competition with Amazon they want their team to work on technologies like Machine Learning or Artificial Intelligence which surely decide the future of Retail Business. For now, few examples that we see in Retail business include:

• Recommendation system, which recommends products based on your search history, views or your past purchasing history and duration on their website.
• Chabot, which is, for now, an alternative option to handle a customer’s basic queries regarding orders but as more and more data has been provided as input to them, their performance and capability is increasing so you never know when they can replace humans as a customer support role which requires less human intervention.
• Companies are testing Humanoid Robots, Drones for the door to door delivery which will surely change the face of retail business.
• Amazon and Walmart both are working on the integration of facial Recognition to understand the expression of the customer whether they are happy with the product or not.
• Machine Learning also helps retail businesses to understand customer churn so that they can understand the reason behind that and allows them to engage customers by offering discounts coupons and loyalty offers.

Technology/Internet Business – Technology/Internet Company like Google, Apple and Microsoft are the key players of these technologies and they surely have their big bets in Machine Learning or Artificial Intelligence Market. These businesses are continuously pushing their research and innovation development area to get a breakthrough in Machine Learning and Artificial intelligence.

• Google’s search engine that I guess everyone uses is the one big example of Machine Learning Technology
• Google’s personal assistant app Google Assistant, Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana is another example of these technologies. Using these technologies one can get updates regarding their flights, appointments etc in no time. They can also do other tasks like Playing your music, turning on and off the lights are namely a few examples that we see on daily basis. And now Amazon’s Alexa joined the club as well
• Google’s Driverless car, Google Map’s navigation which in real time tell you the status of the traffic on your route and in case of jam its helps you to get home by giving other routes options as well. All these applications came under Machine Learning basket
• Microsoft’s home of the future is one such application where they showed what we can expect when these technologies will integrate into our home
• AlphaGo, which is a computer program developed by Alphabet Inc.’s Google DeepMind that plays the board game Go is also an example of these technologies
• The email service you use whether its a Google’s Gmail or Microsoft’s Hotmail, both use Machine learning to classify the spam emails

Hope you get an idea of how big companies are betting on Machine Learning which is a subset of Artificial Intelligence and future with the integration of these technologies will surely prove beneficial for mankind.