Each technology hype-cycle is more boring than the previous one, and clueless business “leaders” and politicians predictably falling for it more depressing. It is really hard not to become utterly cynical.

Meanwhile there would be lots of productive uses for machine learning techniques when properly applied in a domain to assist human experts. Often used example is identifying anomalies in x-rays. These techniques are incredibly powerful in pattern recognition, which could be used to good effect in countless domains.