imho there's a lot of froth in the market. this has created a bunch of 1-st gen AI companies in SF with speculative business models who want data-scientists to essentially work miracles & find needles in haystack.

If someone had told me you could datamine electrical consumption from smart meters, figure out when the customer is running his washer-dryer, and ask the customer to reschedule his laundry routine for a slightly smaller bill so the utility company gets a smoother duty cycle throughout the day, and there was a business model in that, I'd be flabbergasted. And yet, it exists!

This grocery startup that employs essentially portfolio management theory to optimize cost given calorie consumption is not entirely fiction either.

There's a company that datamines historical MLS data joined with facebook data & predicts which customers are potential home buyers because they are having a "life-event" ( usually birth of kid, so need extra room ) & realtors cold-call these potential home buyers.

There's an airline that datamines flight paths of every pilot on its payroll ( essentially (x,y,z,t) coordinates at time t) and flags the dangerous/risky pilots ie. the pilot who is prone to choose those flight paths that bring him very close to another airline, thus creating potential collisions between the airplanes.

I've seen demos of all of the above & more. We live in very, very interesting times!