War of the machines: The opportunities in machine learning for businesses

The theatrical release of James Cameron's sci-fi film Terminator 2, featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger as a cyborg with a computer brain, had a crucial scene deleted. The scene, part of the extended release of the movie, shows young John Connor and his mother opening up the head of the cyborg to switch its computer brain from "read only to "learning" mode. The cyborg (Schwarzenegger) then picks up human values and mannerisms as the movie progresses. For movie buffs, the deleted scene is worth seeing for special effects and also to catch a glimpse of Linda Hamilton (playing John's mother Sarah Connor) with her twin sister Leslie playing her image in a mirror. In the theatrical release, where the scene is omitted, the cyborg just tells John that its brain is a "neural-net processor, a learning computer", without mentioning any on/off options. That was back in 1991. Today, in 2017, a learning computer is much more of a reality. While artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) concepts have been around since the 1940s and 1950s (See ABC of AI, ML and Deep Learning), the availability of huge amounts of data is making the difference now. A "learning computer" does not need to travel back in time -- like in the movie -- and many are solving real problems in India. For example, in healthcare, ML is helping oncologists sift through huge amounts of cancer cases and suggesting preferred treatment; in education it is predicting who might drop out of school; and in fashion it is forecasting colours that can dominate the next season. Retail, transportation and financial services have adopted ML in different forms. The "learning switch" is turned on in India. "Every large organisation was sitting on data.