preface

In the 2010s, a methodology known as machine learning became extremely popular. The novelty of machine learning was that, instead of writing every detail of a computer program by hand, some parts were determined automatically by having a computer analyze data. While machine learning wasn’t new, it rose to prominence during this period thanks to increased computing power and an unprecedented amount of data ready to be exploited.

Machine learning soon became the favorite methodology of artificial intelligence, which is a more general research field that tries to have computers perform tasks similarly to humans. Notably, AI researchers used machine learning to reach record performance in automated analysis of images, video, and text. They also used machine learning to build the famous game-playing software AlphaGo, which beat a human player at the difficult game of Go.

Machine learning also boomed in the business world. For example, companies started using it to automatically analyze online shoppers’ data and generate personalized product recommendations.