An apparatus comprises a host device configured to communicate over a network with a storage system. The host device comprises a multi-path input-output driver configured to control delivery of input-output operations from the host device to the storage system over selected ones of a plurality of paths through the network. The multi-path input-output driver is further configured to collect information characterizing input-output patterns for each of a plurality of different applications executing on the host device, and to provide the collected information to a machine learning system. The machine learning system utilizes the collected information to generate one or more application predictions based at least in part on analysis of observed input-output patterns. The collected information in some embodiments comprises statistical distributions of numbers of input-output operations having payload sizes falling into specified ranges over a given time period.