Below, I’ve placed tasks performed by ML systems in family groups and listed some associated actions. The goal is to make it easier to notice workflows that might benefit from ML systems.
| Family | Tasks | Actions |
|---|---|---|
| Analyse | classify, cluster, pattern-identify, detect anomalies, analyse sentiment, extract | comparison, evaluation, critique, profiling, auditing, diagnosing, segmenting, triage, mapping, tagging, labelling, profiling, monitoring |
| Predict | forecast, rank/recommend | trend spotting, scoring, risk assessment, demand planning, delegation, routing, estimation, prioritisation |
| Reason | reason/infer, plan/decompose, decide | troubleshooting, delegation, root-cause analysis, strategy, scheduling, optimisation, critique |
| Transform (alter structure, format, fidelity of information without impacting meaning) | translate, summarise, denoise, impute, compress/embed | formatting, data cleaning, rephrasing, style/tone adaptation, synthesis, vectorising, editing, simplifying, localisation, normalisation |
| Generate (creation of something new) | generate (text/image/code), transcribe, caption | draft, design, tool building, prototyping, brainstorming, illustrating, coding, templating, documentation |
| Retrieve (accurate finding among giant data sets) | search/retrieve | fact-checking, information gathering, document lookup, semantic search, citation |
| Interact (exchange of information) | converse, instruct/explain | interviewing, coaching, tutoring, customer support, negotiation, role-play, guidance, onboarding, feedback delivery, dialogue-driven automation |
combinations
The output of one task becomes the input for another in order to perform the ultimate action.
2-family
- Retrieval augmented generation (RAG) - retrieval, generation
- Early warning systems - analysis, prediction
- Debate/socratic dialogue - reason, interaction
3-family
- Visualisation - analysis, transformation, generation
- Automation - reason, transformation, interaction
- Conversational knowledge base - retrieval, generation, interaction
- Research synthesis - retrieval, reason, generation
4-family
- Briefing and report generation - retrieval, analysis, reason, generation
- Simulation - analysis, prediction, reason, generation