What Is Machine Learning in Simple Terms

Short answer

Machine Learning is a subset of artificial intelligence where computers learn patterns from data instead of following explicitly programmed rules.

How it works

A model is trained on a dataset by adjusting internal parameters to minimize prediction errors. Once trained, it can generalize to new, unseen data.

Example

An email spam filter is trained on thousands of labeled emails. It learns to recognize patterns in spam and automatically classifies new messages.

Why it matters

Machine learning powers recommendations, image recognition, natural language processing, and autonomous systems. It is transforming industries from healthcare to finance.