Machine learning skills for software engineers

Ted Dunning is chief applications architect at MapR Technologies. A long time ago in the mid 1950's, Robert Heinlein wrote a story called "A Door into Summer" in which a competent mechanical engineer hooked up some "Thorsen tubes" for pattern matching memory and some "side circuits to add judgment" and spawned an entire industry of intelligent robots. To make the story more plausible, it was set well into the future, in 1970. These robots could have a task like dishwashing demonstrated to them and then replicate it flawlessly. I don't think I have to tell you, but it didn't turn out that way.