7. Sentiment Analysis with Core ML

What exactly is machine learning, a term that’s pretty popular at the moment? Machine learning allows computers to learn and make decisions without being explicitly programmed on how to do something. This is accomplished by algorithms that iteratively learn from the data provided. It’s a complex topic and an exciting field for researchers, data scientists, and academia. However, lately, it’s starting to be a must-know skill for good tech people in general. Regular users expect apps to be smarter, to learn from their previous decisions, and to give recommendations for their future actions. For example, when you are listening to songs in YouTube-generated playlists, you expect the next song to be tailored to your musical taste. You expect Google to filter out and not bother you with all the spam e-mails. You expect Siri to know exactly what you mean with your spoken phrases. Machine learning is all the magic behind the scenes that makes all this work. Since conversational interfaces would not work without this magic, you will explore it on iOS in this chapter.