What is machine learning?

Machine learning is a subset of the field of computer science known as artificial intelligence (AI), which seeks to simulate the workings of a human brain. Machine learning is a form of programming, where the software improves its response after learning from previous responses, rather than following only scripted responses. Nascent forms of machine learning first emerged some 20 years ago. The most modern form is "deep learning", which tries to model the neural networks of the human brain by identifying millions of patterns in large datasets to predict the next outcome. It plays an important role in big data analytics and is currently the rage in machine-learning research, given the accessibility of big data and computational power.