Everyone's into machine learning these days - it's going to have as great an impact on society as the internet, as I'm sure you know. Personally, it's not a subject I'm overly familiar with, but I have pondered some practical applications of the tech - to name a few I think would be both highly lucrative (profits) in addition to benefiting society immensely - would be a credit-decision bot that engages the prospective client face-to-face, and is capable of gauging their likelihood of defaulting with a greater degree of accuracy/success than the current standards of a human you often don't even speak to and bases their decision on a credit report that really doesn't tell the whole truth about a person or their situation, and consequently hurts many who're trying to rebuild their credit and also in the need of a short term loan, want to buy a home, etc. The lenders would stand to gain as well and have acquired a client they otherwise would've rejected using the current standards; which are just downright laughable to me.

Another great idea would be to somehow incorporate machine learning into joining the 'fight' against the opiate epidemic. Many don't realize how out of control it's gotten in just the last few years and it's only getting worse, nor how many lives are affected by it.

Anyways, welcome, I'm new as well here and will 'introduce' myself some time within the next 83 hours, maybe sooner.