When it comes to buying things--even big-ticket items--the way we make decisions makes no sense. One person makes an impulsive offer on a house because of the way the light comes in through the kitchen windows. Another gleefully drives a high-end sports car off the lot even though it will probably never approach the limits it was designed to push. When it comes to the customer experience, human beings are fundamentally irrational. In the brick-and-mortar past, companies could leverage that irrationality in time-tested ways.

When Google's AlphaGo algorithm beat the Go world champion in 2016, it became apparent that machine learning had arrived and would significantly shape the future. As a new breed of software that is able to learn without being explicitly programmed, machine learning will be able to access and analyze structured as well as unstructured data at a level of complexity that human minds find difficult to grasp. Looking at the quality of today's voice recognition and image recognition software, as well as at the capabilities of self-driving cars, we can already see how self-learning algorithms may influence our lives. Computer scientists have been pursuing artificial intelligence since the 1950s. Now, thanks to recent advances in technology, including Big Data processing, increased computing power, and better algorithms, computers have begun to compete with, or even surpass, abilities once considered exclusive to humans.

When Google's AlphaGo algorithm beat the Go world champion in 2016, it became apparent that machine learning had arrived and would significantly shape the future. As a new breed of software that is able to learn without being explicitly programmed, machine learning will be able to access and analyze structured as well as unstructured data at a level of complexity that human minds find difficult to grasp. Looking at the quality of today's voice recognition and image recognition software, as well as at the capabilities of self-driving cars, we can already see how self-learning algorithms may influence our lives. Computer scientists have been pursuing artificial intelligence since the 1950s. Now, thanks to recent advances in technology, including Big Data processing, increased computing power, and better algorithms, computers have begun to compete with, or even surpass, abilities once considered exclusive to humans.