Machine Learning (ML) is the essential prerequisite for the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Rapid progress is already being made today, especially in the areas of image and video analysis, speech recognition and with increasing importance in medical diagnostics, process control and customer management. But agriculture, consumer electronics and the smart home will also be controlled by artificial intelligence.
The leaders in ML technology are North America and China with the most applications and the largest number of patents. The situation in Germany is very fragmented. Here it is primarily large companies and micro-enterprises and start-ups that are concerned with the further development of Deep Learning and Natural Language Processing (NLP). Small and medium-sized enterprises tend to be insecure, especially since there is often a lack of technical competence and access to the data required for ML. A detailed analysis of competencies, research and application of ML is provided by a publication of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft.