Vinod Khosla
Vinod Khosla

SAN FRANCISCO – The growth of mobile devices has massively impacted the way we live, work and play, but Sun Microsystems co-founder and venture capitalist Vinod Khosla said that machine learning will make a bigger splash in the years to come.

“Machine learning I think will have a larger impact over 20 years, than mobile had over the past 20,” he said.

KhoslaShrugDisrupt14Through Khosla Ventures, he has invested in a quartet of machine learning startups, because he is bullish about the future possibilities for companies that provide insights to humans from machine-interpreted data sets like Ayasdi and Vectra Networks.

“All these companies, in one form or another, are taking human judgment, and trying to put it into machines,” he said.

If machine learning tools take off, though, Khosla said that the change is going to be massive. Right now, automated systems can read Electrocardiogram (EKG) results as well as a cardiologist, and in the future, he sees computers taking over more and more of the medical profession.

“I think 80 percent of what doctors do will be replaced,” Khosla said.

Of course, we’re still a ways out from that yet.

But if Khosla is right, computer overlords may be a key part of the world’s future.

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