The confluence of the following things will cause machine learning to bring about a revolution:
- Already large amounts of data collected. Large pools of data have been collected, but haven’t been used as much as they could be. Machine learning can teach itself about patterns in the data, and then apply these patterns to new data.
- Cloud computing power: per hour computer processing available at low cost. No need to buy computers, just need a device connected to the internet.
- The latest technology available for free. Core machine learning technology is open source, and the latest versions are publically available at no cost.
This is the first time that the next big technological wave has been so accessible. All that a person requires is a device connected to the internet and a few dollars to develop world-class scalable machine learning applications.