I have always dreamed of living in a world where I wake up to find everything I need ready in my smart house. I go out and take one of those autonomous driving cars to work without a human driver. In that world, human beings do not have to do any dangerous work anymore. We receive better healthcare, especially for older people.
In fact, we are not talking about the very distant future. Actually, we are moving towards this goal, and I am sure all of us have been in one of the following situations before:
1. Amazon recommends you a book or a product you really like.
2. You ask Siri to do something, and it does exactly what you asked for.
3. You are in a Tesla car heading to your destination without a human driver.
Do you know how all these things are done? The secret ingredient is machine learning. Machine learning is about algorithms processing user data and turning it into such magic. Usually, a data scientist is involved in the process. As you can see from the figure below, the size of annually generated data is growing exponentially. On the other hand, we have a shortage of the required data scientists to work on this huge data.
In my thesis, I am working to build these machine learning algorithms automatically without any human intervention. Now, the machine can build these algorithms, select the most appropriate ones, configure them, tune their hyper-parameters, and make this magic happen without any human data scientists involved. Furthermore, the produced machine learning algorithms can compete with the machine learning algorithms created by data scientists.
So, do not be surprised if you wake up in the near future to find yourself in one of those smart houses and everything you need is ready for you. You will go to work in an autonomously driven car, and all your dreams will come true.
