Machine learning is going mobile

Machine learning--the process by which computers can get better at performing tasks through exposure to data, rather than through explicit programming--requires massive computational power, the kind usually found in clusters of energy-guzzling, cloud-based computer servers outfitted with specialized processors. But an emerging trend promises to bring the power of machine learning to mobile devices that may lack or have only intermittent online connectivity. This will give rise to machines that sense, perceive, learn from, and respond to their environment and their users, enabling the emergence of new product categories, reshaping how businesses engage with customers, and transforming how work gets done across industries. Emerging technologies rarely get as big a publicity boost as machine learning recently saw, when Google software defeated one of the world's top players of Go, one of the most complex board games ever created, in a best-of-five series of matches.6 The international headlines confirmed that machine learning--the process by which fresh data can teach computers to better perform tasks--is one of the hottest domains within the field of artificial intelligence, and that this cognitive technology is progressing rapidly.7 Neural networks--computer models designed to mimic aspects of the human brain's structure and function, with elements representing neurons and their interconnections--are an increasingly popular way of implementing machine learning.