Machine learning, a branch of artificial intelligence, is a scientific discipline concerned with the development of algorithms that take as input empirical data, such as that from sensors or databases. The algorithm is designed to (a) identify (i.e., quantify) complex relationships thought to be features of the underlying mechanism that generated the data, and (b) employ these identified patterns to make predictions based on new data. Data can be seen as instances of the possible relations between observed variables; the algorithm acts as a machine learner which studies a portion of the observed data (called examples of the data or training data) to capture characteristics of interest of the data's unknown underlying probability distribution, and employs the knowledge it has learned to make intelligent decisions based on new input data.
One fundamental difficulty is that the set of all possible behaviors given all possible inputs is (in most cases of practical interest) too large to be included in the set of observed examples. Hence the learner must generalize from the given examples in order to produce a useful output from new data inputs.
Optical character recognition, in which printed characters are recognized automatically based on previous examples, is a classic engineering example of machine learning.
Read more about Machine Learning: Definition, Generalization, Machine Learning, Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) and Data Mining, Human Interaction, Algorithm Types, Theory, Applications, Software, Journals and Conferences
Famous quotes containing the words machine and/or learning:
“I find it hard to believe that the machine would go into the creative artist’s hand even were that magic hand in true place. It has been too far exploited by industrialism and science at expense to art and true religion.”
—Frank Lloyd Wright (1869–1959)
“I thought a minute, and says to myself, hold on,—s’pose you’d a done right and give Jim up; would you felt better than what you do now? No, says I, I’d feel bad—I’d feel just the same way I do now. Well, then, says I, what’s the use you learning to do right, when it’s troublesome to do right and ain’t no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)