The preceding three decades have seen the emergence, rise, and proliferation
of machine learning (ML). From half-recognised beginnings in perceptrons,
neural nets, and decision trees, algorithms that extract correlations (that is,
patterns) from a set of data points have broken free from their origin in
computational cognition to embrace all forms of problem solving, from voice
recognition to medical diagnosis to automated scientific research and
driverless cars, and it is now widely opined that the real industrial
revolution lies less in mobile phone and similar than in the maturation and
universal application of ML. Among the consequences just might be the triumph
of anti-realism over realism
