From the course: Machine Learning in Mobile Applications

What is machine learning?

From the course: Machine Learning in Mobile Applications

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What is machine learning?

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To understand machine learning, we must first look at what is artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence, or AI, refers to manmade systems that do tasks that have traditionally required human intelligence. Of course, what constitutes what is artificial intelligence is a constantly moving target. 100 years ago, simple multiplication and division may have been considered something that requires human intelligence. But now a machine that can multiply numbers is not considered unusual or exceptional. We have moved on to AI trying to understand the intent of speech, evaluate the contents of images, and even understand relationships between complex data sets. Now we have further moved on to generative AI, including what I like to call "artificial creativity." Over time, these will likely also be considered to be pedestrian and, artificial intelligence, reimagined for much more complex tasks. Machine learning is a subset of AI. It is a part of artificial intelligence that creates methods for algorithms that get better over time. In essence, to learn. While it is common for AI and machine learning to be used interchangeably, they are not exactly the same. We can find machine learning being used in multiple applications today, many of which we are starting to use in our everyday lives. For several years, we have been seeing the rise of assistants like Cortana and Alexa. These assistants get better over time, understanding our likes and dislikes, getting better at playing music and shows that we like, and even understanding some of our requests. We also see it in the rise of self-driving cars. These cars can learn from the mistakes on the road. In fact, it is likely that the cars will soon understand who is driving and act accordingly. If you ever see a self-driving car acting very cautiously around you, it may be because your record shows you to be a poor driver. Facebook is now identifying friends and family in photos you upload. Financial trading is increasingly being done by computers that learn over time about what does and doesn't work. We can even see it in websites that come up with a chat bot that asked us if they can help us today, and then it's able to understand our request. All of these are machine learning and we can leverage these technologies in our applications.

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