Machine learning
Level 1
A way of building software that learns patterns from examples instead of being given rules.
Term 2 of 8 in Basic AI
In plain language
With traditional software, a person writes the rules. With machine learning, you show the software thousands of examples and it works out the rules itself. Almost every AI product you have used is built this way.
Think of it like this
It is the difference between teaching someone to cook by handing them a recipe, and teaching them by letting them taste a hundred versions of the same dish.
Why it matters
This explains why AI systems can be brilliant and confidently wrong at the same time. They learned from examples, and examples run out.
Next terms in Basic AI
- Artificial intelligenceSoftware that performs tasks we normally think of as requiring human judgement.
- ModelThe trained file that holds everything an AI system learned.
- TrainingThe process of showing a model huge amounts of data so it can learn patterns.
- AlgorithmA defined set of steps for solving a problem.