Artificial Intelligence for Business, 2nd Edition

7

What Is Machine Learning?

In this chapter

• What it means to learn

• Using data to teach machines

• Putting machine learning to practical use

• Surveying different types of machine learning

Machine learning (ML) has been around for a long time. You can tell because the term itself is a little old-fashioned. You don’t often hear computers referred to as machines. The term machine learning got its start in 1959 when computer pioneer Arthur Samuel wondered if computers could learn their behavior instead of explicitly being programmed to do specific tasks. This was a big change from how most computer scientists viewed computers: a computer needed to ...