Academia Spotlight, Issue 5 - What can machines learn and how can they help humans?

Promoting science and academia work in Steemit

A review of academic blog entries posted by @coinbitgold, who is using all Steem Dollars from my #academiaspotlight upvotes to promote Steemit to Scientists, Economists, Engineers, Mathematicians in academia. All steem dollars from this post will go to author and reviewer for thanking their contribution to steemit #academia!

1st issue @ben.zimmerman PhD student in neuroscience

2nd issue @justtryme90 Biochemist

3rd issue @valenttina Chemical Engineering student

4th issue @ct-gurus Computed Tomography gurus

Announcement: Because Curie is doing such a great job with upvoting recent science articles of good quality, I have decided to shift the focus of #academiaspotlight to only spotlight posts that are past their 1st payout or even 2nd payout aka the sleeping beauty posts buried deep within Steemit. This also means finding good science post and knocking on the doors of those MIA authors who have not posted in a long time. We might also be changing the format of #academiaspotlight a little as it goes. This will be for the next post!


Welcome to the 5th issue of #academiaspotlight !

Post: @cristi/how-to-use-machine-learning-to-recognize-text-in-images
Author: @cristi
Reviewer: @coinbitgold

For this issue, I am casting a steemian who has been around in steemit for 2 months - @cristi !

He is from Romania and is an independent researcher and author. He had written posts on machine learning and programming using python. See his introduction here and find out more about him!


Importance of machine learning

In essence, machine learning is feeding data to algorithms and then for algorithms to "learn"and predict the behavior. Machine learning is so useful that Harvard Business Review has claimed that it is a field that every manager should know and learn. The reason is that a huge amount of data and trends can be obtained both for management and business operations using machine learning. Multiples sets of data are important for managers because managers simply can’t manage something that they can’t measure. Machine learning is definitely going to change the way how data is collected and analyzed by both human and machine.

Source: here

Even though machine learning has a lot of benefits to businesses and the economy, it does have some of its drawbacks. One of its major drawbacks is privacy protection in facial recognition technology. Normally, for privacy reasons, there are times when faces are pixelated and by eye ball, no one can really see the face. But machine learning has helped computers become so smart that it can even recognize your face even if you have your photo in pixels.

If you value your privacy a lot, researchers will have to warn you that advances in machine learning has made whatever photos you placed in the internet identifiable and traceable to you. An app based on advanced machine learning called FindFace can use your face print and track down your identity in social networks at a success rate as high as 70%!

A word of caution is this - think twice before placing any photos and information in the public arena internet and be responsible for your own actions!

What I learnt from his post

Source: IBM Watson website

@cristi had introduced tools like IBM Watson and Python and illustrated how they can be used to identify characters in images and also facial recognition. I have never had in depth knowledge of machine learning and so I did a little research on IBM Watson. Turns out IBM’s Watson is a truly remarkable program which can even detect leukemia faster than human scientists! Normally, human scientist take 2 weeks but using Watson only takes 10 minutes for the diagnosis! Computer Watson can even be Master Chef Watson in case you are not aware. It even has a new role in fighting cybercrime by analyzing and identifying possible hacks as early as possible!

Useful life hacks! If you are now curious on how it works after hearing so much, you can check it out here.

If you have missed @cristi post, make sure to follow him now! He will be writing articles on genomics, programming and critical thinking on steemit. I wish all the best to @cristi and look forward to his future blog entries. Half of steam dollars from this post will go to @cristi for thanking his contribution to steemit #academia #science.


We hope that you have learnt something from this post. We also welcome any feedback on #academiaspotlight.

Please message me at steemit.chat @coinbitgold and drop any science or technology posts that are more than 1 month old and did not receive as much love as you think had deserved.

Stay tuned and watch out for #academiaspotlight issue 6!

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