Machine Learning Meets the Lean Startup

We just finished our Lean LaunchPad class at UC Berkeley's engineering school where many of the teams embedded machine learning technology into their products. It struck me as I watched the teams try to find how their technology would solve real customer problems, is that machine learning is following a similar pattern of previous technical infrastructure innovations. Early entrants get sold to corporate acquirers at inflated prices for their teams, their technology, and their tools. Later entrants who miss that wave have to build real products that people want to buy. I've lived through several technology infrastructure waves; the Unix business, the first AI and VR waves in the 1980's, the workstation wave, multimedia wave, the first internet wave.