Code Mining

Machine-learning techniques are starting to achieve some impressive feats. The successes are due, in part, to the availability of astonishingly large amounts of data that can be used for training. Show a suitably equipped system a billion images of cats and a billion images of lawn mowers, and then see whether it can figure out what the common patterns are. If this succeeds, we can then show the same system a picture of our own cat or lawn mower, and maybe it can tell which is which. Of course, if you show the same system an image of a house, it wouldn't have a clue beyond saying that it's neither a cat nor a lawn mower. Basically, what we're leveraging are statistics, not intelligence, but, nonetheless, the results can be impressive.