Machine Learning and You: How machine learning techniques apply outside of computer science.

The results of the model I created in a week... a lot of it is jargon I don't understand!

After my work experience at GDS, I had another work experience placement at Aviva Digital Garage. Now, since this job placement was completely random and out of my control, when I got the job placement, I immediately thought to myself:

"Oh, a placement at an insurance company. Guess I'll be doing some telemarketing crap..."

But then I read the job title - data scientist. It intrigued me. I did some research, and lone and behold, I was going to be applying machine learning in Python! Amazing! Me, a 17 year old sixth form student, will be creating a model using mock-data, that can be used to predict even more data via machine learning.

For the uninitiated, machine learning is a technique used by programmers in order to train a machine to give an outcome using a set of data. The most basic example is teaching a machine to tell whether or not a picture you give it is a... let's say a dog. You feed the machine train data, which is probably pictures of dogs and pictures of things that are not dogs, and the machine will create an algorithm that will determine if the amalgamation of pixels is a dog or not.

Now, if that's not impressive, I don't know what is.

You see this technology in a lot of everyday things, like Apple's FaceID or Windows Hello. My question was, how did this apply to something so niche like Aviva?

Well, there were a lot of applications. Just to name a few, the fine folks at Aviva Digital Garage use machine learning to recommend products, predict outcomes using records of data, and other features that allow the company to better push themselves as the best insurance company.

Now, if an insurance company has applications of machine learning, where does that put every other company? I believe that most companies can benefit from a data science team. Everything is moving so fast it's like a blur. Everything will be digitised at some point, but digitising early puts you at a competitive edge where other companies haven't.

As such, universities are now giving courses on pure artificial intelligence rather than just a module. Courses as niche as this wouldn't be offered if there wasn't a demand for it in industry. And with the multiple applications of machine learning, if your company isn't applying machine learning,you might be losing out in a big share of the market.

For further information on this topic, I can't recommend much, but the thing that got me into A.I and machine learning was carykh's evolution simulator, where makes a machine create a creature that can run as far as possible using a certain number of parts.

As a chess enthusiast, I also read Garry Kasparov's Deep Thinking, which is an interesting read, even if you're not a fan of chess. I feel this is a well documented insight on the first time humanity was overtaken by A.I.