I think machine learning has a real ability to do certain things (image recognition especially) and do them in a way that isn't hype by itself.
I suspect that you'll encounter limits to the techniques before they do everything a person can do.
If there's a potential problem with machine learning that could sink the enthusiasm over time, I suspect it would come because machine learning applications are these black-boxes system which are the product of training with huge datasets and which use the very tuned-level of expertise of their creators (a common joke is talking of the "graduate school descent" algorithm, getting enough grad students to tune your app till it work). It may be that the deployers of these applications may find that when they have to train them again, in a year's time, that the geniuses have moved on to other things or that the geniuses now charge rates that look excessive for an application that works for just a year.
But that's just spinning possibilities. Currently things seem to be going great.
I suspect that you'll encounter limits to the techniques before they do everything a person can do.
If there's a potential problem with machine learning that could sink the enthusiasm over time, I suspect it would come because machine learning applications are these black-boxes system which are the product of training with huge datasets and which use the very tuned-level of expertise of their creators (a common joke is talking of the "graduate school descent" algorithm, getting enough grad students to tune your app till it work). It may be that the deployers of these applications may find that when they have to train them again, in a year's time, that the geniuses have moved on to other things or that the geniuses now charge rates that look excessive for an application that works for just a year.
But that's just spinning possibilities. Currently things seem to be going great.