If understanding machine learning is not part of your career plan … you have a problem
With each day that goes by, the entry barriers for machine learning solutions and their training are lower, while experience of managing them becomes essential on any CV worth the name if you want to be part of the new, and still relatively scarce talent set for which companies are willing to pay ever higher wages. By now, understanding the application of machine learning for an increasing range of situations is akin to what putting on your curriculum “basic computer skills” or “proficient in Excel” was two decades or more ago.
Robots that make other robots, machines that program themselves, cars that cost less to insure because they have semi-autonomous driving features that result in fewer accidents, huge video libraries for teaching basic and not so basic concepts to machines, all kinds of proposals to understand and learn machine learning without programming… We’ve gone beyond the hype about the next task or feat that a machine can do better than a human. This is the next revolution, the great game changer, and that will impact on our lives in the same way the internet did, back in the day. Everybody is talking about it.
When everything around you, starting with your smartphone, now uses features based on machine learning and can recognize your face even if you have shaved off your beard or now wear glasses, or suggests services based on the information it receives or from your habits, what it’s really saying is that we’re at the next frontier and what is now needed to make products and services competitive. Let’s talk about manufacturing, operations, marketing, distribution, customer service, marketing or whatever: we have to get used to thinking that we are going to find machine learning in a growing range of products and services, and that someone you will have to manage them and know how to turn all these possibilities into competitive advantages. The new generation of managers will necessarily have acquire these skills, one way or the other. Second-hand information, or worse, misinformation based on myths and clichés isn’t going to cut it.
Will there be a machine learning bubble? As has happened in the past with new technologies, to some extent. Nevertheless, now is the time get a firm grasp of machine learning and to learn as much as possible about something that is going to play a very important role in defining our future.
(En español, aquí)
