News
Skills Gap Aside, Machine Learning Growing Sharply
- By Michael Desmond
- August 05, 2019
Despite some obstacles, it's boom times for machine learning.
Research firm Zion Market Research projected in a recent report that machine learning spending will hit $20.83 billion in 2024 from $1.58 billion in 2017, a compound annual growth rate of just over 44 percent.
The report cites "technological advancements and proliferation in data generation" as two of the biggest drivers of machine learning adoption, alongside growing demand for "intelligent business processes and increasing adoption in modern applications."
There are several issues preventing more widespread adoption, however -- chief among them the ongoing shortage of skilled employees.
It's a concern that's cropped up in other research, including the 2019 CIO Survey by research firm Gartner, which found that 54 percent of respondents considered the shortage of skilled artificial intelligence (AI) practitioners as the biggest challenge facing their organizations.
Other top obstacles to machine learning identified in the Zion report were data security and the ethical implications of deployed machine learning algorithms.
The report tracks spending across a broad range of sectors, including banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), health care and life science, retail, manufacturing, telecommunications, government and defense, and others.
About the Author
Michael Desmond is an editor and writer for 1105 Media's Enterprise Computing Group.