The Chinese curse might be now updated to "may you wind-up dependent on 'really interesting novel applications'..."
Machine learning-derived applications are impressive and give a good show until one winds up in a situation where they are expected to work reliably. Sure, it's nice that the insurance company's phone-based, voice-recognition-driven, registration/etc system can understand 99% of the choices people give them - except total failure in that 1% is actually going to leave a large population unserved and angry. Of course the company has keypad backup - except they don't 'cause that would cost the money they claimed voice recognition could save, etc.
Machine learning apps are great for situations where
1) You don't expect 100% reliably and the degree of non-reliably doesn't have to even be quantified.
2) Either you are accept that they'll degrade over time and have an army of tuners and massive data collect to keep that from happening OR you are dealing with an environment you completely control.
This is kind of the conditions for regular automation - except even more so.
Machine learning-derived applications are impressive and give a good show until one winds up in a situation where they are expected to work reliably. Sure, it's nice that the insurance company's phone-based, voice-recognition-driven, registration/etc system can understand 99% of the choices people give them - except total failure in that 1% is actually going to leave a large population unserved and angry. Of course the company has keypad backup - except they don't 'cause that would cost the money they claimed voice recognition could save, etc.
Machine learning apps are great for situations where 1) You don't expect 100% reliably and the degree of non-reliably doesn't have to even be quantified. 2) Either you are accept that they'll degrade over time and have an army of tuners and massive data collect to keep that from happening OR you are dealing with an environment you completely control.
This is kind of the conditions for regular automation - except even more so.