What does it take to earn the title “expert” in a field?
It seems like nowadays everyone is an “expert” at something. It is easy enough to add the word expert into your social media bio, but what truly separates an expert from a layperson?
Pattern recognition.
Someone that has developed deep expertise in a subject is able to see trends and patterns where other people don’t. The college basketball recruiter is able to see the signs of a talented basketball player that has potential. The expert hostage negotiator knows that when the person says X, we must respond with Y to minimize risk in the situation. The business executive is has seen the business cycles and knows based on lived experience and the right data, what decisions to make to move the business forward.
In order to create an effective machine learning algorithm you need a foundational framework (logic that recognizes the patterns) coupled with numerous data points that teach the algorithm how to react. You get these data points by actually running tests. The more data you have, the more accurate your algorithm will be. Tesla collects data from millions of cars on the road and is constantly improving their self driving capabilities. The more data the received from actual drivers, the more the algorithm learns how to make better and better decisions. They are experts of self driving technology.
Instagram/Youtube/Facebook/Tiktok - all of their algorithms learn what you like through your continued input and then provide you will like. Their algorithms recognize patterns of behavior and make recommendations based on that. They are experts at knowing what you will want.
In our own process of becoming an expert in a field, we look to books as shortcuts to becoming an “expert.” Books serve as the foundational framework that allows us to recognize the patterns in the first place, but we often overlook this tedious task of collecting the necessary data to truly be an expert. This requires action (making a decision) coupled with time (waiting to see how it turns out) repeated over and over until it becomes lived experience.