The Master Algorithm

You may not know it, but machine learning is all around you. When you type a query into a search engine, it’s how the engine figures out which results to show you (and which ads, as well). When you read your email, you don’t see most of the spam, because machine learning filtered it out. Go to Amazon.com to buy a book or Netflix to watch a video, and a machine learning system helpfully recommends some you might like. Facebook uses machine learning to decide which updates to show you, and Twitter does the same for tweets. Whenever you use a computer, chances are machine learning is involved somewhere. Traditionally, the only way to get a computer to do something—from adding two numbers to flying an airplane—was to write down an algorithm explaining how, in painstaking detail. But machine learning algorithms, also known as learners, are different: they figure it out on their own, by making inferences from data. And the more data they have, the better they get. Now we don’t have to program computers; they program themselves.

Pedro Domingos

http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~pedrod/