MIT researchers have developed a system that may one day replace human intuition.

According to Nature Word Report, the system locates predictive patterns hidden in unfamiliar data sets in a fraction of the time it would a human being to accomplish the same task.

The so-called “Data Science Machine,” competed against human teams in three data science competitions and outperformed them in every one.

As reported in EurekAlert, Max Kanter, a researcher whose MIT master's thesis in computer science formed the basis of the Data Science Machine, sees his work as a supplement to mental strategies, saying, "We view the Data Science Machine as a natural complement to human intelligence."

"There's so much data out there to be analyzed. And right now it's just sitting there not doing anything. So maybe we can come up with a solution that will at least get us started on it, at least get us moving," adds Kanter.

Kanter’s thesis advisor, Kalyan Veeramachaneni, speaks of the new understanding that is emerging through their experiments with the “Data Science Machine,” saying, "What we observed from our experience solving a number of data science problems for industry is that one of the very critical steps is called feature engineering,"

"The first thing you have to do is identify what variables to extract from the database or compose, and for that, you have to come up with a lot of ideas." Says Veeramachaneni.

With the “Data Science Machine,” the scientific community comes ever closer to approaching a world shaking advance in Artificial Intelligence.

According Max Galka, an expert in machine learning, we are still far away from coming near machines that could realistically anticipate human behavior. As quoted in Salon, Galka says that after decades of dedication to this project, “there has been very little progress to suggest it is even possible.”