Sophia Rowland takes us through an experiment:
Ever since automated machine learning has entered the scene, people are asking, “Will automated machine learning replace data scientists?” I personally don’t think we need to be worried about losing our jobs any time soon. Automated machine learning is great at efficiently trying a lot of different options and can save a data scientist hours of work. The caveat is that automated machine learning cannot replace all tasks. Automated machine learning does not understand context as well as a human being. This means that it may not know to create specific features that are the norm for certain tasks. Also, automated machine learning may not know when it has created things that are irrelevant or unhelpful.
To strengthen my points, I created a competition between myself and two SAS Viya tools for automated machine learning. To show that we are really better together, I combined my work with automated machine learning and compared all approaches. Before we dive into the results, let’s discuss the task.
The results are in line with my expectations: a good automated ML tool will make life easier, but doesn’t replace the expert system of a human.