Software Is Eating the World, Machine Learning is Eating Software and NLP is Eating Machine Learning

Most software in the world is going to be rewritten with ML as a core component and, within ML, NLP is influencing the direction of the entire space.

Source: https://www.reflectionsofthevoid.com/2016/10/links-of-day-17102016-mit-tardis-20.html

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The title summarizes some ideas that I was discussing with computer science students earlier this week about the value accrual trends in the machine learning(ML) market. The line “software is eating the world” can almost be considered pop culture these days. Quoted in 2011 by software legend Marc Andreesen, it synthesized the idea that companies that operated mostly in the physical world were transitioning to the digital economy in a trend that will essentially transform every company as a software company. A similar value capture relationship can be seen in terms of the influence of ML in the software industry and natural language processing(NLP) in the recent evolution of ML.

Two main ideas to explore in that thesis that I would like to outline in simple terms:

1) ML is Eating Software.

During the last few decades, different software trends established themselves as fundamental components of software applications. Components such as databases or cloud infrastructures can be, arguably, considered fundamental blocks of any modern software applications and, as a result, have captured a significant portion of the software market.