Google has launched a service that could bring machine learning to many more apps. Google Prediction API provides a simple way for developers to create software that learns how to handle incoming data.

For example, the Google-hosted algorithms could be trained to sort e-mails into categories for “complaints” and “praise” using a dataset that provides many examples of both kinds. Future e-mails could then be screened by software using that API, and handled accordingly.

Google’s service provides a kind of machine-learning black box– data goes in one end, and predictions come out the other. There are three basic commands: one to upload a collection of data, another telling the service to learn what it can from it, and a third to submit new data for the system to react to based on what it learned.