Finding things that you need online sometimes seems as easy as pie. Searching for something as simple as a recipe for a dish can lead you to finding similar recipes that you may like. Watching a video on YouTube will lead to watching even more videos that you also happen to find interesting. Using the internet may seem so intuitive, either you barely notice how a lot of the things you find online appeal to your interests and likes, or you find how much it knows you almost spooky and unnerving. Nowadays, not all searches are equal. How the internet appears to you will be different from how it is for someone else – and we can all thank machine learning for that. Machine learning is an application of artificial intelligence that provides systems the ability to learn and re-learn without explicit programming.
Learning happens based on data the system can access and processes that the system is asked to perform. Many websites, including Google, use some form of machine learning algorithm to learn about you. These algorithms often use your profile, any information you provide, and your activity on the website to deduce about what would appeal to you.
The advent of machine learning systems has opened the way for the kind of personalization that some people may take for granted these days. Website suggestions and recommendations are taken up a notch every time you hit the search button. The more you use a website with machine learning algorithm, the more optimized your searches on that website will be.
Ads that show up on websites you visit are ads targeting you. Machine learning makes sure that the ads you will see are chosen based on your internet use and any data about you that the system can access.
If you are from the retail industry, this smart feature that machine learning provides is great for your business. Imagine your marketing strategies backed up by real-time personal recommendations about your products. When you make use of such intelligent automation, your customers and prospects can become more aware of what you are selling.
You will see increased efficiency in terms of lessening time spent on formulating customer-specific approaches. What used to take so much effort and time of your current manpower can now be easily performed by a computer. Your employees, in turn, can focus on more income-generating tasks.
These machine learning algorithms are applicable not just in the retail industry. No matter what kind of business you have, you can make use of machine learning to automate some or all processes and operations of your business. If you are looking into using machine learning for your business too, you can easily look at systems that are available for businesses such as the WorkFusion platform.
Although machine learning has allowed great progress in personalization and in business operations, there is still a lot of work to be done because machine learning systems are far from perfect. As technology quickly works toward better algorithms and systems, machine learning platforms used together with good old human intelligence is still the best way forward.
