Microsoft truly embraced the technology when it started Bing in an attempt to catch up with Google. Satya Nadella ran engineering and technical strategy for the search division before becoming chief executive officer two years ago and has been sprinkling machine learning like fairy dust on everything his company touches. "Microsoft is now in this place where they have machine learning very deeply embedded," Domingos says. "They’re investing a lot in making machine learning less Wild West."

Like Google and Amazon, which have both used the technology to improve their own products, Microsoft is weaving machine learning into its own operations. This isn't simply about helping the company save money and function better; the more Microsoft uses the technology itself, the easier it is to explain and sell. "Customers are confused," says Joseph Sirosh, lured from Amazon in 2013 to oversee engineering for Microsoft’s machine learning efforts. "Cutting through that noise has been a bit of a challenge. It has been also hard for our own field and sales people to go talk to customers and educate them about all the use cases."

CFO Amy Hood’s finance department has come to rely on algorithms—using them to help forecast sales and how many licenses the company will sell in a given period. "It turns out to be very, very accurate for that application," Sirosh says. "Amy Hood is a big fan of this. She can sleep nicer knowing that a machine learning model predicted her quarter."

Eoin Treacy's view

Major technology companies are investing heavily in machine learning with the aim of answering questions we have not yet learning how to ask. It’s hard to take the ego out of decision making. Strong personalities generally tend to get their way not because what they want is the most appropriate course of action but because they can shout loudest, have the best connections or the most persuasive argument. Machine learning holds out the promise of creating data driven business models with reduced influence of big personalities. We might someday hope that governments adopt the same data driven methods.

Microsoft continues to reinvent itself following the accession of Satya Nadella as CEO. The share (Est P/E 18.59, DY 2.81%) bounced two weeks ago from the region of the 200-day MA but considering how the broad market environment is developing it is reasonable to expect some additional volatility and support building.