What is machine learning?
"Machine learning is the subfield of computer science that gives computers the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed."
- Arthur Samuel, 1959
What do we mean by machine learning? Most computer programs today are handcrafted by humans. Software engineers carefully craft every rule that governs how software behaves and then translate it into computer code.
If you are reading this as an eBook, take a look at your screen right now. Everything that you see appears there because of some rule that a software engineer somewhere crafted. This approach has gotten us quite far, but that's not to say there are no limits to it. Sometimes, there might just be too many rules for humans to write. We might not be able to think ...
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