I love the concept of machine learning. It's how IBM's Watson learned to play Jeopardy. It simply looked at all the questions ever asked on Jeopardy, and read all the wrong and right answers, and from this information, figured out the pattern of "correct answers". I think that's mind-boggling.
There's another story out today about machine learning. The article at physorg explains how a computer system learned to play the computer game "Civilization" -- by reading the manual! It's an amazing story. Check it out. This field is really moving now. It's not quite time to welcome our overlords but machine learning is growing by leaps and bounds.
Like the Chinese, it comes. Zillions!