Comment by Analog24 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Analog24 | Hacker News Reader

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The accessibility of machine learning does not affect its impact on society. It already has had a big impact on society whether people realize it or not. It is used for countless tasks that people take for granted (spam filter, facial recognition, translation, etc.).

We live in a society where people are completely dependent on technologies that they know nothing about. The average person who uses a computer or a smartphone wouldn't even be able to tell you how to represent the number 2 in binary yet these devices have a huge impact on their lives. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing I'm not sure since it is no longer possible to understand every aspect of technology at our current (and accelerating) level of progress.

> The accessibility of [cars] does not affect its impact on society.

I would think the accessibility of something is directly related to its impact on society most of the time. There is no doubt ml has already had an impact, but putting it in the hands of non-technical users opens up possibilities that the technical crowd is incapable of imagining.

I'm not sure I understand your 'cars' comment. The vast majority of people who drive cars have no idea how an engine works yet they are completely dependent on them.

'How' something works doesn't affect it's impact on society, the more important consideration is 'what' it does.

My original point was that machine learning is not something that the average person can apply in his or her own business yet. Yes, big tech companies use it to improve their operations, but a small business owner can't define what would even be an applicable ML problem for their business yet. Millions of small businesses have websites, and even their own custom software, yet ML is still out of reach for many of these business. This is where I think a huge impact can, but has yet, to be made.

I completely agree with you. It just seemed like your initial comment was dismissing the effect/impact of ML because not everyone has the time to learn how to implement it.

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