Three Ways Machine Learning Will Help Leaders Become Better Decision Makers

Once the stuff of science fiction novels, machine learning--where computers improve automatically through experience--is now attracting the attention of a wide range of industries. As with many recent advances in tech, machine learning's growth has been largely fueled by the development of new learning algorithms and theory, and by the ongoing explosion in the availability of online data and low-cost computation. Machines are better equipped than ever to capture and analyze large quantities of multisourced, ever-changing data. But analyzing data is not the same thing as using it to make decisions--and here is where humans come in. Humans are still needed to innovate, to put ideas in an appropriate context, and to suss out an action's wide-ranging implications.