Machine Learning - The main impact areas where we can use it

Numerous businesses across the different sectors have struggled during the COVID-19 pandemic. There have been few exceptions, especially within the information technology field, that have revealed unnecessary duplication and waste. The major shift to remote work has been one such move that exposed inefficiencies and other wasteful practices. 

The use of technologies such as data science and machine learning has ensured businesses remain lean and efficient in these challenging times. Already, trials towards the adoption of these technologies had begun before the coronavirus outbreak. The COVID-19 pandemic has helped fast-track the adoption of these technologies as businesses scrambled to handle the situation. Machine learning makes use of powerful algorithms to draw insights from real-world data and make predictions about future outcomes. The availability of new data facilitates the refinement of machine learning programs and better and updated predictions. Take note of the fact that machine learning is not a perfect solution, just like other tools. However, machine learning outperforms different statistical and linear algorithms in the majority of situations.

The following are the most common areas in which machine learning is making a big difference.

Where Experts Can't Code Rules - Human-oriented tasks present unique challenges that are not easily solvable through simple or deterministic rule-based solutions. In some functions, so many factors influence the final answer, which means that engineers would have to repeatedly write and update a huge number of lines of code. Additionally, it is difficult to code precise rules dependent on too many factors that overlap or need fine-tuning. Machine learning comes in mainly because ML programs will only require proper algorithms to extract patterns automatically.

When Scaling to Millions of Cases - For example, you may be able to categorize a few hundred payments as fraudulent manually. However, it becomes impossible when you have to deal with millions of payments to sift through and flag fraudulent payments. Organizations are deploying AI-backed solutions as their user bases grow, and manual processing becomes impossible. Users are increasingly in need of prompt responses, especially with monetary issues. They no longer want to wait for minutes or hours before getting satisfactory answers to their queries. Machine learning offers the tools to handle large-scale data problems without the need for human intervention. 

For Handling Manual Tasks When It's Not Cost-efficient - There are manual tasks that can be handled by staff within an organization quickly and effectively. However, the manual workload will often be associated with a high cost in terms of time and operation costs.  Machine learning offers a well-defined and optimized method of processing data and other tasks. ML technology will help cut the time and budget associated with the completion of different jobs. In many instances, machine learning offers a predictable and pay-as-you-go pricing strategy even for fully scaled operations. 

To Handle Massive Datasets that Have No Obvious Patterns - It is not uncommon to have a well-curated dataset and even knowing the underlying problem. However, it has confounded you how you can't pick out any explicit patterns from the data. The lack of noticeable marks may have stopped you from encoding any validations. Also, there could be typographic errors, missing fields, and even human-related mistakes, yet no validation has been made. You may as well know that the data set is of poor quality and can manually fill out missing entries or affected rows. You still cannot draw any connections between valid and invalid records. Machine learning algorithms can help to pick out any discernible patterns and solve the problem. These algorithms can quickly establish any hidden connections between data points that the human eye cannot pick. Some machine learning tools will even explain how they arrived at their connections and validations. 

Enhance Adaptability in an Ever-Changing World - The world is increasingly changing as well as the fast-paced technological changes. That implies that the problems that you solved yesterday can easily change. It necessitates that a previous solution is changed accordingly since it may become useless or inefficient. For example, an organization that processes medical appointment recordings for different uses such as diagnoses, billing codes, and procedure information will need to review its rules regularly. The required updates cannot be implemented in real-time. Errors and incorrectly labeled items may lead to legal consequences, huge fines, and insurance rejections. Machine learning would ensure that patterns and other learning methods can be picked from the data across your application's entire life cycle. Machine learning will learn from the first line of code to the ending of the model. It ensures that production-grade systems can have feedback loops that help catch problems immediately the model fails to solve a problem correctly. 

In conclusion, note that machine learning is a tool and not a magic solution. Machine learning is about creating models that use advanced math-based algorithms to identify patterns in data and offer validations or further learning points. When appropriately used applied in different situations, machine learning can help cut the amount of time spent on tasks, eliminate errors associated with manual IT operations, reduce IT costs, and increase business value. 

Author: Alessandro Civati

Email: [email protected]

Blockchain ID: https://lrx.is/CbhI9sT5vt