What makes for a good application of machine learning? This is a discussion of the various factors that come in to play while making the decision to incorporate machine learning into a task. Some factors include (but are not limited to)

• The current status of an application (i.e. does an application to accomplish this task already exist?)
• The task to which machine learning will be applied
• The current state/capabilities/limitation of machine learning technologies (in general - not specific technology stacks)
• Examples of machine learning tasks and what results a user can expect