NPTEL

Video Course on Machine Learning

Professor Carl Gustaf Jansson, KTH

Week 1 Introduction to the

Machine Learning course

Video 1.4 Applications of Machine Learning

How to make some sense of all current announcement of
Artificial Intelligence applications?

LG has launched the ThinQ AI focused TV brand.

Huawei, Samsung and Qualcomm launch AI powered Smart Phones.
Burger King boosts ´AI-written´ ads. .................

Some things are great but some things are just crap!

A majority of real current Artificial Intelligence success stories relate to the

application of Machine Learning only!

A majority of current Machine Learning success stories relate to

Image and Speech processing!
Applications of Machine Learning can be analyzed in two dimensions
General application sectors:
• Medical diagnosis, personalized treatments and drug design
• Driverless vehicles and household robots
• Personal assistants, recommender systems and navigators
• Adapting Communications and Social media services
• Marketing and sales
• Optimization of technical processes
• Monitoring and surveillance
• Financial services
• Cyber security
• Machine translation
Specific categories of data analysis:
1. Image Recognition – Computer vision
2. Speech Recognition
3. Datamining for Large Datasets
4. Textmining of Large Document Collections
5. Dynamic adaption of technical systems

Typically a subset of categories of data analysis contribute to the general application sectors.
1. Image Recognition - Computer Vision
Image recognition and Computer vision  deals with how computers can be made to gain high-level understandings
from digital images or videos. The area seeks to automate tasks that the human visual system can solve.

Image recognition is currently the most succesful application domain for machine learning techniques. Recent advances in
medical diagnosis and seldriving vehicles are primarily due to progress in image recognition.

Sub-domains of computer vision include: 

• object and event detection
• video tracking and motion analysis
• scene reconstruction
• image restoration

Typical phases of computer vision systems:

• image acquisition
• preprocessing
• feature extraction
• detection/segmentation
• high level processing
• decision-making
2. Speech Recognition
Speech recognition enables the recognition and translation of spoken language into computer readable text.

Both Acoustic modeling and Language modeling are important parts of modern statistically-based speech

recognition algorithms.

Speech recognition is currently one of the most succesful application domain for machine learning techniques.

Recent advances in personal assistants, machine translation and communication support systems are primarily
due to progress in speech recognition.

Speech recognition systems can typically be classified in:

• Speaker independent systems
• Speaker dependent systems where the system analyzes the person's specific voice and uses it to fine-tune the
recognition of that person's speech. Speaker identification can also be used to authenticate or verify the
identity of a speaker as part of a security process.
3. Datamining or Data analytics for Large Datasets
Datamining is a process used to extract actionable data patterns from large datasets.

The motivation for datamining has typically a business oriented motivation , to support a wide range of
business decisions ranging from operational to strategic.

Datamining is primarily applied i weak theory domains to discover new patterns.

Datamining is related to phenomena like data discovery, knowledge discovery, business intelligence and
data-warehouses.

The datasets may be:

• user-input to e-commerce systems
• user-input to personal assistants, recommender systems, mail systems and social media
• data collected from industrial processes
• data collected from on-line learning systems (´learning analytics´)
• large factual, financial and statistical databases

For Datamining, most variants of machine learning techniques are applicable.

4. Textmining or Text analytics for Large Document Collections
The goal for text-mining or text analytics is the process of exploring and analyzing large amounts
of unstructured text data aided by software that can identify concepts, patterns, topics, keywords and other
attributes in the data.

Textmining combines Natural Language Engineering techniques with Data Science techniques.

Typical document collections targeted by textmining are:

- Business related documents
- Scientific publications
- Governmental reports
- News streams.

Multiple language issues and machine translation are crucial for text mining.

Many applications need incremental textmining of new documents to augment

knowledge-based systems (expert systems).
5. Adaptive control of technical systems

Adaptive control is the control method used by a controller which must adapt to a controlled system
with parameters which vary, or are initially uncertain. Adaptive control focus mostly with the existence
and characterization of optimal solutions, and algorithms for their exact computation,

One example is robot learning which studies techniques allowing a robot to acquire novel skills or
adapt to its environment through learning algorithms.

The most relevant machine learning technique is reinforcement learning which in contrast to analytical
methods can function in the absence of a mathematical model of the environment.

Reinforcement learning is  concerned with how software and hardware agents take actions in

an environment so as to maximize some notion of cumulative positive feedback. By systematically
making logs of the outcomes of previous actions, these outcomes can then be fed back into the systems
to allocate credit and blame to the actions of the systems and there by optimizing future performance.
Examples of Applications in Medicin belonging to the 5 categories

1. Image analysis for diagnosis of breast cancer

2. Speech recognition for filing medical records

3. Data mining in large clinical databases

4. Textmining of new medical publications to updated medical expert systems

5. Training of robot movements for surgical robots.

NPTEL

Video Course on Machine Learning

Professor Carl Gustaf Jansson, KTH

Thanks for your attention!

The next lecture 1.5 will be on the

topic:

Tutorial for Week 1