Machine learning for dummies: You needn't go back to uni to use it

Artificial intelligence and its sub-domains look set to be the next major growth area for software developers, programmers, hackers and just about anyone who has anything to do with software. There doesn't appear to be an area of life that it doesn't touch – self-driving cars, tagging porn stars on Pornhub, healthcare, security and so on. The sad truth, though, is that most of us don't understand the field. For the most part, it's not like "normal" programming where an algorithm is developed, tested and released as a product. Machine learning, for example, relies on selecting a model, developing it, training the model, testing and then releasing.