10 AI and ML Usecases

With all the buzz around AI and ML, it can be hard to know what they actually do. Here are 10 simple ways ML already shows up in everyday life.

1. Customer service. you ever go on a website and a little chat window pops up asking if you need help? That's a chatbot, and it's powered by ML. Or maybe you've called a company and a robot voice answered, asking you to say what you need. That's ML too.

2. Voice assistants. got an iPhone or an Alexa? Those are voice assistants, and they use ML to turn your speech into text, then figure out what you asked for. The same idea powers auto-captions on Slack and YouTube.

3. Mobile apps. app like lyft or Uber use ML to match riders with drivers, and to figure out the fastest route. ML also helps apps like Spotify and Netflix suggest music and movies you might like.

4. ML built into your phone. have a smartphone? ML is built into it. It helps your phone recognize your face or fingerprint, and it can even help you take better photos.

5. Catching fraud. In the US, people make about 150 million credit card purchases every day, thats about 1,739 every second. ML models are trained to spot the suspicious ones and flag them for a closer look. No human could keep up with that many transactions. ML also runs a huge chunk of stock market trading, somewhere between 60-73% of it, and that share keeps growing.

6. Cybersecurity. ML helps computers learn to spot cyber attacks and stop them before they cause damage.

7. Getting around. Google Maps uses ML to check traffic and find the fastest route. Uber and Lyft use it to match riders with nearby drivers.

8. Email. ML sorts your inbox, filters spam, and suggests those quick auto-complete replies.

9. Healthcare. This is a great example of ML helping people work better, not replacing them. Doctors miss 30-40% of cancers when reading mammograms, and false alarms are even more common. ML models are trained to spot tumors that are hard for the human eye to catch. That makes readings more accurate and saves doctors time, so they can focus on the cases that need the most attention. ML is also helping catch lung cancer early and spot bone fractures.

10. Marketing and sales. According to Forbes, this is the team that uses AI and ML the most at most companies, for finding new customers, analyzing data, and improving search rankings. A lot of the time they reuse models built for other things. Think about how Netflix suggests what to watch next based on what you like. Marketing teams use that same kind of model to build ads and campaigns aimed right at your interests.

You've probably heard a lot about AGI, artificial general intelligence that could one day think like a human or even better. That's still just an idea, its not real yet. But machine learning is real, and its already a normal part of everyday life.