Machine learning: The smart person's guide - TechRepublic

Machine learning is a branch of AI. Other tools for reaching AI include rule-based engines, evolutionary algorithms, and Bayesian statistics. While many early AI programs, like IBM's Deep Blue, which defeated Garry Kasparov in chess in 1997, were rule-based and dependent on human programming, machine learning is a tool through which computers have the ability to teach themselves, and set their own rules. In 2016, Google's DeepMind, beat the world champion in Go by using machine learning--training itself on a large data set of expert moves. In supervised learning, the "trainer" will present the computer with certain rules that connect an input (an object's feature, like "smooth," for example) with an output (the object itself, like a marble). In unsupervised learning, the computer is given inputs and is left alone to discover patterns. In reinforcement learning, a computer system receives input continuously (in the case of a driverless car receiving input about the road, for example) and constantly is improving. A massive amount of data is required to train algorithms for machine learning. First, the "training data" must be labeled (for instance: a GPS location attached to a photo).