Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters
If you're keeping up to date on technology news, you're probably seeing references to machine learning everywhere, and for good reason: machine learning is an integral component of the way that computers process information.Â
Machine learning is all around us, informing our day to day lives from the way we navigate Google maps right down to the way we check our inboxes.Â
But what is it exactly, and when did it start being such a big deal?
Here's a quick explainer to get you up to date:Â
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There have been two especially important developments in the history of machine learning: the first began with artificial intelligence pioneer Arthur Samuel, who coined the term "machine learning" back in 1959.
Arthur Samuel sits at his computing checker machine.IBM In 1959, MIT engineer Arthur Samuel described machine learning as a "Field of study that gives computers the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed."Â Samuel was busy creating his own computing machine: an autonomous checker program that he envisioned would someday beat the top world checker player champion.Â
The other important development in machine learning? The internet.
The advent of the internet presented a trove of accumulated data. With so much information readily available, there seemed but one thing to do: figure out a way to organize it into meaningful patterns â one of machine learning's most integral roles.
Big data is the fundamental building block of machine learning.
Big data, is, essentially, exactly what it's called: a ton of data. It's all of the information accrued by social media companies, search engines, and even microphones and cameras that are constantly collecting information.Â
But current day iterations of machine learning have radically evolved since the 1600s. Today, machines can learn with only minimal human intervention.
Through machine learning, technologists have mimicked the way the human brain works by producing sophisticated systems called neural networks. In turn, neural networks enable deep learning, an outcome that has produced computer systems superseding human intelligence.Â
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Machine learning plays a key role in the development of artificial intelligence.
A.I. and machine learning are often conflated, but they're not the same thing. Artificial intelligence refers to a machine's ability to perform intelligent tasks, whereas machine learning refers to the automated process by which machines weed out meaningful patterns in data. Without machine learning, artificial intelligence as we know it wouldn't be possible.
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