Machine is going to change the world more than any other , over the next several decades. To take advantage of the machine learning revolution we (aka product managers) should move quickly to equip ourselves with the necessary tools. Or else, we would be lost in obscurity bitting the dust, because many top technology companies are already harnessing ML to create new business opportunities. learning technology As Mark Cuban recently stated: “Artificial Intelligence, deep learning, machine learning — whatever you’re doing if you don’t understand it — learn it. Because otherwise you’re going to be a dinosaur within 3 years.” Here is why I believe every Product Manager should understand Machine Learning and how can they get a jump start on it. The Why ? For a moment, pause and think of all the products that you use on a daily basis. I bet they all use some flavor of machine learning in their products. Here are a few that I am guessing we all use almost everyday: Google, trying to answer your query with the best possible results ? This is a problem — helping users find _the right thing w_hen they search. ranking Netflix or Spotify suggesting movies or songs to customers that they might be interested in? This is a problem — giving users , without them explicitly searching. recommendation things they may be interested in Zillow predicting your house prices? This is a problem — predicting a . regression numerical value of a thing Gmail marking an email as spam/not spam? This is a problem — figuring out something is. classification what kind of thing Facebook photos detecting faces? This is a also problem. classification Amazon’s world famous “customers who bought this also bought this” ? This is in action — Putting clustering similar things together. And the list can go on, but I guess you get my point. Machine learning is everywhere. Machine learning is going to upend industries and your product. If I can go a bit further, it will be the next big tech platform where incumbents will be upended and new leaders emerge (If you think ML is a fad, check in with someone who thought the web was a fad in 1998, or mobile in 2008). Hence, as product managers we need to understand the current state of machine learning, and the opportunities and techniques such as deep learning provide for transforming your products and delighting your users. By ‘understanding machine learning’ I don’t mean that you have in-depth knowledge of ML algorithms that you should be able come up with models for the algorithms (it will be good if you can, but that’s besides the point). But, you should know enough to answer these questions below: How much value Machine learning is going to add to your product ? What can Machine learning achieve for your product, and what would it take to execute it (more data, better algorithm, etc) — in technical sense Identify difference between hype and real-achievable things from Machine learning. And then, when you are working on a product that uses Machine learning (which will be very often), you should make sure to understand: That there are lot many ways by which Machine learning can create illusion of being right when it is not — learn to capture that. How much sample of data will be needed so that your predictions can hold true in real world. That preparation of data will account of 80–90% of a developer’s time The How? A simple google search on ‘machine learning for beginners’ can give you more than a million results. To make things easier, with the help of some of my friends at Amazon, I have curated a list of the best resources to learn about machine learning esp. for Product Managers Books by Toby Segaran Programming Collective Intelligence by Pedro Domingos The Master Algorithm by Nils Nilsson Introduction to Machine Learning by Ian Whitten Data Mining by Foster Provost Data Science for Business by Michael Nielsen Neural Networks and Deep Learning by Tariq Rashid Make Your Own Neural Network Courses by Andrew Ng (highly recommended) Introduction to Machine Learning by Udacity Machine Learning Engineer by Adam Geitgey Machine learning is Fun! by Siraj Raval How to use Tensorflow for Classification by Daniel Jeffries Learning AI if you suck at Maths by Jason Brownlee Machine Learning Mastery by Georgia Tech (Udacity) Machine Learning Must-Reads: by Sam DeBrule WTF is Artificial Intelligence by Ken Norton Machine learning for Product Managers by Frank Chen AI, Deep Learning, and Machine Learning: A Primer by Andrew Ng Artificial Intelligence is the new electricity by Shivon Zilis The current state of Machine Learning by Steven Levy How Google is remaking itself a ‘Machine Learning First’ company by Dorian Pyle (Mckinsey) An executives guide to machine learning by Fabien Girardin Experience Design in the Machine Learning Era by Sam DeBrule (subscribe to his newsletter) A human’s guide to Machine learning by Mike Yeomans What every manager should know about Machine Learning by Nick Mccrea An introduction to Machine Learning theory and its application by Ben Hamner Machine Learning pitfalls Other: by Kevin Drum Robots Artificial Intelligence Job Automation This is in no way an exhaustive list and I will keep updating it as and when I come across more valuable resources. All product managers, I would love to know your take on ML and how it is impacting your products. Please leave a comment below.
