Ask the average person on the street what IBM does, and you might get a blank stare, or perhaps “Didn’t they do that 'Jeopardy!’ thing a few years ago?” Once a household name whose mainframes, PCs, and typewriters could be found in nearly every large company around the world, IBM has mostly fallen off the pop culture radar in the last few years.
If you’ve been in a bank lately, you’ve probably noticed there aren’t many tellers—perhaps two or three at any given time, tops. Many banks now encourage their customers to use ATMs instead for most of their banking needs. (Don’t weep for the bank tellers, though -- because of the phenomenal growth in the number of bank branches, there are actually more bank tellers employed in the U.S. than ever before.)
Even before there were digital images and image editing software, graphic artists had an occasional need to extract an arbitrary shape (such as the outline of a human subject) from an image so that it could be placed in other images. In the days of chemical photography, this involved complex darkroom techniques or even painstakingly cutting things out of paper prints with scissors. Imagine fitting that into your schedule these days!
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, the inhabitants had access to advanced medical care provided by robots. The Star Wars medical droids had the ability to diagnose and treat their patients with extraordinary knowledge and numerous built-in surgical tools. They had extra added bonus skills in reasoning and communication with their patients—any species from any planet speaking any language. Their bedside manner was, of course, impeccable.
You’ve read a number of articles in this space about different types of machine learning, with a high-level view of how they work and the types of technologies that machine learning will enable in the future. “But,” you’re thinking, “What are some of the ways machine learning is being applied right now, to do useful work outside the laboratory?”
If you buy into the hype, you might believe an army of intelligent robots is on the march RIGHT NOW, coming to TAKE YOUR JOB.
