Machine Learning
A branch of AI where computers learn patterns from data rather than being explicitly programmed with rules. Powers most modern AI applications.
Machine learning (ML) is a subfield of artificial intelligence in which systems learn patterns from data rather than being programmed with explicit rules. Given examples and labels, an ML model gradually adjusts internal parameters until it can make predictions on new, unseen data.
Major categories include supervised learning (training on labelled examples), unsupervised learning (finding structure in unlabelled data), and reinforcement learning (learning through trial and error with rewards). Modern ML predominantly uses deep learning — neural networks with many layers that learn hierarchical representations.
ML powers most contemporary AI applications, including image recognition, speech recognition, language translation, recommendation systems, and large language models like ChatGPT and Claude. The field has advanced rapidly since 2012 when AlexNet demonstrated deep learning's superiority on the ImageNet benchmark.