What is machine learning? Here's what you need to know about the branch of artificial intelligence and its common applications | Tech - Business Insider

• Machine learning allows a computer to teach itself how to solve problems by analyzing large sets of data.
• Human programmers don't teach machine learning systems how to solve problems, nor do they generally understand the algorithm that a computer devises based on the data.  
• Here is a brief introduction to machine learning and common uses for the technology.

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Dave Johnson, writes in the Los Angeles sunshine says, Machine learning is a fast-growing and successful branch of artificial intelligence. In essence, machine learning is the process of allowing a computer system to teach itself how to perform complex tasks by analyzing large sets of data, rather than being explicitly programmed with a particular algorithm or solution. 

Machine learning is a common tool in robotics technology.
Photo: Axel Heimken/dpa/Getty Images

In this way, machine learning enables a computer to learn how to perform a task on its own and to continue to optimize its approach over time, without direct human input. 

In other words, it's the computer that is creating the algorithm, not the programmers, and often these algorithms are sufficiently complicated that programmers can't explain how the computer is solving the problem. Humans can't trace the computer's logic from beginning to end; they can only determine if it's finding the right solution to the assigned problem, which is output as a "prediction."...

Types of machine learning

There are several different approaches to training expert systems that rely on machine learning, specifically "deep" learning that functions through the processing of computational nodes. Here are the most common forms:

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Source: Business Insider