The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World

by Pedro Domingos

The best way for a company to ensure that learners like its products is to run them itself. Whoever has the best algorithms and the most data wins. A new type of network effect takes hold: whoever has the most customers accumulates the most data, learns the best models, wins the most new customers, and so on in a virtuous circle (or a vicious one, if you’re the competition). Switching from Google to Bing may be easier than switching from Windows to Mac, but in practice you don’t because Google, with its head start and larger market share, knows better what you want, even if Bing’s technology is just as good. And pity a new entrant into the search business, starting with zero data against engines with over a decade of learning behind them. You might think that after a while more data is just more of the same, but that saturation point is nowhere in sight. The long tail keeps going. If you look at the recommendations Amazon or Netflix gives you, it’s clear they’re still very crude,