Quick Answer
What is Machine Learning?
Machine Learning is a branch of AI where systems learn patterns from data instead of following fixed rules.
Machine Learning
Machine Learning
Also known as: ML
By Glintr Editorial TeamReviewed by Glintr Learn ReviewersUpdated 5 min readArea: Machine Learning
Definition
Machine Learning (ML) is the branch of Artificial Intelligence where models learn from data — training on examples to make predictions or decisions. It powers recommendations, fraud detection, forecasting and the underlying training of large language models.
In technical terms
Machine Learning includes supervised, unsupervised and reinforcement learning. Models are trained by minimising a loss function over a dataset, typically using gradient descent, and evaluated on held-out data.
Real-world examples
- Netflix recommending shows based on your watch history.
- A bank flagging an unusual credit card transaction.
- Predicting house prices from square footage and location.
Common mistakes
- Confusing correlation with causation in model outputs.
- Training on biased data and expecting fair predictions.
- Skipping evaluation and shipping a model that fails on new data.
Related Concepts
- Artificial IntelligenceArtificial Intelligence is the field of building software systems that can perceive, reason, learn and generate content.
- Deep LearningDeep Learning is a type of machine learning that uses many-layered neural networks to learn complex patterns.
- Neural NetworkA Neural Network is a computational model of interconnected nodes that transform inputs into outputs through learned weights.
- Data ScienceData Science is the practice of turning data into decisions using statistics, programming and domain understanding.
- AlgorithmAn algorithm is a step-by-step procedure that takes an input and produces an output.