Explainer: What Is Machine Learning?

Machine learning (ML) has become a hot topic in the last few years, but what you may not realize is that the concept of machine learning has been around for decades. The design of machine-learning systems used to this day is based on the human brain model described by Donald Hebb in 1949 in his book "The Organization of Behavior." Hebb noted that when cells in the brain fire in a repeated pattern, synaptic knobs are formed or enlarge if they already exist. The same principle is applied to nodes in a digital neural network. Nodes develop relationships that grow stronger if they are activated simultaneously and weaken if they fire separately.