Interesting piece on the McKinsey Insights site on machine learning. It’s aimed at executives to give them an overview of some key issues and trends and worth a read if you want some examples of how companies and researchers are innovating in this sector.
While useful, it does fall into the trap of overplaying the significance of machine learning in the short term:
Now is the time to grapple with these issues, because the competitive significance of business models turbocharged by machine learning is poised to surge. Indeed, management author Ram Charan suggests that “any organization that is not a math house now or is unable to become one soon is already a legacy company.
Steady on. People were saying similar things about the internet and retailing almost 20 years ago and, despite the rise of online retailing, we still have high streets and old-fashioned shops. Of course, the high street is changing and more money is being spent online but in the UK it still only accounts for 15% of retail spending. But I suppose you get less attention by claiming that things are going to change slowly over the next couple of decades rather than “you’re all going to go out of business next week”.
This caught my eye:
Last fall, they tested the ability of three algorithms developed by external vendors and one built internally to forecast, solely by examining scanned résumés, which of more than 10,000 potential recruits the firm would have accepted. The predictions strongly correlated with the real-world results.
I can see that if this software takes off there will be a whole new business in helping people write CVs which score well with these algorithms, a sort of SEO for job applicants. CV Algorithm Optimisation (CVAO) – wonder if that will catch on.