Intro…

The ability to interpret data and translate it into information is critical for scientific research and invention. As a result, we are witnessing the emergence of new computing methods. In practice, machine learning has evolved into an interdisciplinary field that incorporates methods from data analysis, statistics, data mining, pattern recognition, and predictive analytics.

Recently, while researching the potential effects of recent developments on human activities, the frequency/occurrence of a few words revealed the direction technology is heading in, namely AI, Data Science, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning.

Further Search

I conducted extensive research on Natural Language Processing and concluded that the future belongs to those who can control data regardless of any structural formulation constraints.

The journey wasn’t easy at first; if I recall correctly, it began in February 2018. My close friend posted a photo of us on Facebook, and the program recognized my face automatically and chose me out of 5 people in the picture to ask if I wanted to be tagged in the picture.

Interest

This has piqued my interest, and as you may know, I enjoy it when machines behave like humans. I started looking into it and discovered that a machine learning algorithm is checking and learning the pattern of all the photos that have been uploaded over the years. Okay, one could argue that they didn’t have the absolute right to do so, but the sheer beauty and strength of the technology in that single act was captivating.However, it should be noted that all users have signed up to help improve the system, and they may use this as an excuse to use the information from people to build a larger knowledge base.

Fast-forward to 2019, while my initial focus was pictorial machine learning, machine learning as a branch of artificial intelligence has expanded beyond image matching. It accepts all data, whereas the secret to Facebook machine learning is Rosetta.

…Extension

Now we extend this to other areas of human endeavor.

We have self-driving cars. What it means is that very soon the need for human drivers will be eliminated. With great companies like Uber, Tesla, Lyft, and Google pumping millions of dollars for the development of self-driving cars, the research in this field is among the hottest that there is right now. Such cars will be powered by Reinforcement Learning algorithms at their core. Once a solid learning algorithm is in place, humanity will be able to avoid millions of deaths per year that are caused by road accidents.

The roads will be safer and the problem of traffic jams can also be eliminated, but I fear, Nigeria has a long way to go in this area.

Application

A more realistic application for the Nigerian environment is the speech recognition system. This type of system is already in place in some hi-Tech and multinational companies.

As mentioned above, Siri, Google Assistant, and maybe Cortana are all powered by Natural Language Processing(NLP) based AI systems. Everything revolves around NLP, so the future belongs to people that are very competent in NLP.

Final words…

AI is a technology that has shown great promise in a number of fields (Healthcare, Government, Transport, and Education). At the cost of repeating myself, I’d say someone with the right attitude and willingness to put in the effort can learn AI and contribute their share of human societal development.

If you are just starting, you do not need a Master’s or Ph.D. degree that will cost you a fortune. You can get started almost for free. There are numerous platforms like Coursera, Udemy, Udacity, etc that are going to get you started in this field in no time.