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Understanding Machine Learning: Uses, Example

Machine Learning Specialization Stanford

machine learning description

Much of the technology behind self-driving cars is based on machine learning, deep learning in particular. In a 2018 paper, researchers from the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy outlined a 21-question rubric to determine whether a task is suitable for machine learning. The researchers found that no occupation will be untouched by machine learning, but no occupation is likely to be completely taken over by it. The way to unleash machine learning success, the researchers found, was to reorganize jobs into discrete tasks, some which can be done by machine learning, and others that require a human. In some cases, machine learning can gain insight or automate decision-making in cases where humans would not be able to, Madry said.

Neural networks are a commonly used, specific class of machine learning algorithms. Artificial neural networks are modeled on the human brain, in which thousands or millions of processing nodes are interconnected and organized into layers. Supervised machine learning models are trained with labeled data sets, which allow the models to learn and grow more accurate over time. For example, an algorithm would be trained with pictures of dogs and other things, all labeled by humans, and the machine would learn ways to identify pictures of dogs on its own.

DeepLearning.AI’s expert-led educational experiences provide AI practitioners and non-technical professionals with the necessary tools to go all the way from foundational basics to advanced application, empowering them to build an AI-powered future. Chat GPT There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data. Gaussian processes are popular surrogate models in Bayesian optimization used to do hyperparameter optimization.

Machine learning (ML) is a branch of artificial intelligence that focuses on developing algorithms that use mathematical and statistical models to perform data analysis tasks without explicit instructions. Machine learning algorithms can process large quantities of historical data and identify patterns. They can use the patterns to predict new relationships between previously unknown data.

Although complex models can produce highly accurate predictions, explaining their outputs to a layperson — or even an expert — can be difficult. For example, e-commerce, social media and news organizations use recommendation engines to suggest content based on a customer’s past behavior. In self-driving cars, ML algorithms and computer vision play a critical role in safe road navigation. Other common ML use cases include fraud detection, spam filtering, malware threat detection, predictive maintenance and business process automation. Depending on the model type, data scientists can re-configure the learning processes or perform feature engineering, which creates new input features from existing data.

For instance, consider the example of using machine learning to recognize handwritten numbers between 0 and 9. The first layer in the neural network might measure the intensity of the individual pixels in the image, the second layer could spot shapes, such as lines and curves, and the final layer might classify that handwritten figure as a number between 0 and 9. ML has played an increasingly important role in human society since its beginnings in the mid-20th century, when AI pioneers like Walter Pitts, Warren McCulloch, Alan Turing and John von Neumann laid the field’s computational groundwork. Training machines to learn from data and improve over time has enabled organizations to automate routine tasks — which, in theory, frees humans to pursue more creative and strategic work. Using historical data as input, these algorithms can make predictions, classify information, cluster data points, reduce dimensionality and even generate new content.

Rule-based machine learning is a general term for any machine learning method that identifies, learns, or evolves “rules” to store, manipulate or apply knowledge. The defining characteristic of a rule-based machine learning algorithm is the identification and utilization of a set of relational rules that collectively represent the knowledge captured by the system. A Machine Learning Engineer is responsible for designing and developing machine learning systems, implementing appropriate ML algorithms, conducting experiments, and staying updated with the latest developments in the field.

The proliferation of wearable sensors and devices has generated significant health data. Machine learning programs analyze this information and support doctors in real-time diagnosis and treatment. Machine learning researchers are developing solutions that detect cancerous tumors and diagnose eye diseases, significantly impacting human health outcomes. For example, Cambia Health Solutions uses machine learning to automate and customize treatment for pregnant women. The volume and complexity of data that is now being generated is far too vast for humans to reckon with.

Such systems “learn” to perform tasks by considering examples, generally without being programmed with any task-specific rules. Semi-supervised anomaly detection techniques construct a model representing normal behavior from a given normal training data set and then test the likelihood of a test instance to be generated by the model. Most of the dimensionality reduction techniques can be considered as either feature elimination or extraction.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Machine Learning-FAQs

Shulman said executives tend to struggle with understanding where machine learning can actually add value to their company. What’s gimmicky for one company is core to another, and businesses should avoid trends and find business use cases that work for them. Privacy tends to be discussed in the context of data privacy, data protection, and data security. For example, in 2016, GDPR legislation was created to protect the personal data of people in the European Union and European Economic Area, giving individuals more control of their data. In the United States, individual states are developing policies, such as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which was introduced in 2018 and requires businesses to inform consumers about the collection of their data.

As machine learning continues to evolve, its applications across industries promise to redefine how we interact with technology, making it not just a tool but a transformative force in our daily lives. Deep learning is a subfield of ML that focuses on models with multiple levels of neural networks, known as deep neural networks. These models can automatically learn and extract hierarchical features from data, making them effective for tasks such as image and speech recognition. In finance, ML algorithms help banks detect fraudulent transactions by analyzing vast amounts of data in real time at a speed and accuracy humans cannot match. In healthcare, ML assists doctors in diagnosing diseases based on medical images and informs treatment plans with predictive models of patient outcomes. And in retail, many companies use ML to personalize shopping experiences, predict inventory needs and optimize supply chains.

Advantages of Machine Learning

Transparency and explainability in ML training and decision-making, as well as these models’ effects on employment and societal structures, are areas for ongoing oversight and discussion. The Machine Learning Specialization is a beginner-level program aimed at those new to AI and looking to gain a foundational understanding of machine learning models and real-world experience building systems using Python. A machine learning model’s performance depends on the data quality used for training. Issues such as missing values, inconsistent data entries, and noise can significantly degrade model accuracy. Additionally, the lack of a sufficiently large dataset can prevent the model from learning effectively.

This is handy when working with data like long documents that would be too time-consuming for humans to read and label. Gen AI has shone a light on machine learning, making traditional AI visible—and accessible—to the general public for the first time. The efflorescence of gen AI will only accelerate the adoption of broader machine learning and AI. Leaders who take action now can help ensure their organizations are on the machine learning train as it leaves the station.

Machine learning algorithms enable 3M researchers to analyze how slight changes in shape, size, and orientation improve abrasiveness and durability. Unsupervised machine learning is often used by researchers and data scientists to identify patterns within large, unlabeled data sets quickly and efficiently. Marketing and e-commerce platforms can be tuned to provide accurate and personalized recommendations to their users based on the users’ internet search history or previous transactions. Lending institutions can incorporate machine learning to predict bad loans and build a credit risk model. Information hubs can use machine learning to cover huge amounts of news stories from all corners of the world. The incorporation of machine learning in the digital-savvy era is endless as businesses and governments become more aware of the opportunities that big data presents.

  • Lending institutions can incorporate machine learning to predict bad loans and build a credit risk model.
  • This machine learning process starts with feeding them good quality data and then training the machines by building various machine learning models using the data and different algorithms.
  • And so, Machine Learning is now a buzz word in the industry despite having existed for a long time.

Another common model type are Support Vector Machines (SVMs), which are widely used to classify data and make predictions via regression. SVMs can separate data into classes, even if the plotted data is jumbled together in such a way that it appears difficult to pull apart into distinct classes. To achieve this, SVMs perform a mathematical operation called the kernel trick, which maps data points to new values, such that they can be cleanly https://chat.openai.com/ separated into classes. Once training of the model is complete, the model is evaluated using the remaining data that wasn’t used during training, helping to gauge its real-world performance. Bringing it back to training a machine-learning model, in this instance training a linear regression model would involve adjusting the vertical position and slope of the line until it lies in the middle of all of the points on the scatter graph.

In common usage, the terms “machine learning” and “artificial intelligence” are often used interchangeably with one another due to the prevalence of machine learning for AI purposes in the world today. While AI refers to the general attempt to create machines capable of human-like cognitive abilities, machine learning specifically refers to the use of algorithms and data sets to do so. Since deep learning and machine learning tend to be used interchangeably, it’s worth noting the nuances between the two. Machine learning, deep learning, and neural networks are all sub-fields of artificial intelligence. However, neural networks is actually a sub-field of machine learning, and deep learning is a sub-field of neural networks. Machine learning has made disease detection and prediction much more accurate and swift.

In the years since its widespread deployment, machine learning has had impact in a number of industries, including medical-imaging analysis and high-resolution weather forecasting. This is especially important because systems can be fooled and undermined, or just fail on certain tasks, even those humans can perform easily. For example, adjusting the metadata in images can confuse computers — with a few adjustments, a machine identifies a picture of a dog as an ostrich. Machine learning is the core of some companies’ business models, like in the case of Netflix’s suggestions algorithm or Google’s search engine.

There are an array of mathematical models that can be used to train a system to make predictions. At the birth of the field of AI in the 1950s, AI was defined as any machine capable of performing a task that would typically require human intelligence. Machine learning may have enjoyed enormous success of late, but it is just one method for achieving artificial intelligence. This ebook, based on the latest ZDNet / TechRepublic special feature, advises CXOs on how to approach AI and ML initiatives, figure out where the data science team fits in, and what algorithms to buy versus build. Lev Craig covers AI and machine learning as the site editor for TechTarget Editorial’s Enterprise AI site.

In the following example, the model is used to estimate how many ice creams will be sold based on the outside temperature. A hugely simplified example of what data features are is given in this explainer by Google, where a machine-learning model is trained to recognize the difference between beer and wine, based on two features, the drinks’ color and their alcoholic volume (ABV). Amid the enthusiasm, companies face challenges akin to those presented by previous cutting-edge, fast-evolving technologies. These challenges include adapting legacy infrastructure to accommodate ML systems, mitigating bias and other damaging outcomes, and optimizing the use of machine learning to generate profits while minimizing costs.

For example, a Bayesian network could represent the probabilistic relationships between diseases and symptoms. Given symptoms, the network can be used to compute the probabilities of the presence of various diseases. Bayesian networks that model sequences of variables, like speech signals or protein sequences, are called dynamic Bayesian networks. Generalizations of Bayesian networks that can represent and solve decision problems under uncertainty are called influence diagrams. Robot learning is inspired by a multitude of machine learning methods, starting from supervised learning, reinforcement learning,[76][77] and finally meta-learning (e.g. MAML).

Meanwhile IBM, alongside its more general on-demand offerings, is also attempting to sell sector-specific AI services aimed at everything from healthcare to retail, grouping these offerings together under its IBM Watson umbrella. To predict how many ice creams will be sold in future based on the outdoor temperature, you can draw a line that passes through the middle of all these points, similar to the illustration below. An important point to note is that the data has to be balanced, in this instance to have a roughly equal number of examples of beer and wine. The key difference from traditional computer software is that a human developer hasn’t written code that instructs the system how to tell the difference between the banana and the apple.

In particular, we aim to study long-term fairness and develop robust learning algorithms in a strategic classification framework. Your responsibilities will involve designing and constructing sophisticated machine learning models, as well as refining and updating existing systems. Common applications include personalized recommendations, fraud detection, predictive analytics, autonomous vehicles, and natural language processing.

An alternative is to discover such features or representations through examination, without relying on explicit algorithms. A core objective of a learner is to generalize from its experience.[5][42] Generalization in this context is the ability of a learning machine to perform accurately on new, unseen examples/tasks after having experienced a learning data set. ML finds application in many fields, including natural language processing, computer vision, speech recognition, email filtering, agriculture, and medicine.[3][4] When applied to business problems, it is known under the name predictive analytics. Although not all machine learning is statistically based, computational statistics is an important source of the field’s methods. ML models can analyze large datasets and provide insights that aid in decision-making.

Modern organizations generate data from thousands of sources, including smart sensors, customer portals, social media, and application logs. Machine learning automates and optimizes the process of data collection, classification, and analysis. Businesses can drive growth, unlock new revenue streams, and solve challenging problems faster. In the Work of the Future brief, Malone noted that machine learning is best suited for situations with lots of data — thousands or millions of examples, like recordings from previous conversations with customers, sensor logs from machines, or ATM transactions.

machine learning description

These parameters include the weights and biases formed by the algorithm as it is being trained. The final parameters for a machine learning model are called the model parameters, which ideally fit a data set without going over or under. Regression and classification are two of the more popular analyses under supervised learning. Regression analysis is used to discover and predict relationships between outcome variables and one or more independent variables. Commonly known as linear regression, this method provides training data to help systems with predicting and forecasting.

Machine learning systems are used all around us and today are a cornerstone of the modern internet. At each step of the training process, the vertical distance of each of these points from the line is measured. If a change in slope or position of the line results in the distance to these points increasing, then the slope or position of the line is changed in the opposite direction, and a new measurement is taken. Developing the right ML model to solve a problem requires diligence, experimentation and creativity. Although the process can be complex, it can be summarized into a seven-step plan for building an ML model. In select learning programs, you can apply for financial aid or a scholarship if you can’t afford the enrollment fee.

ML requires costly software, hardware and data management infrastructure, and ML projects are typically driven by data scientists and engineers who command high salaries. Clean and label the data, including replacing incorrect or missing data, reducing noise and removing ambiguity. This stage can also include enhancing and augmenting data and anonymizing personal data, depending on the data set. The new Machine Learning Specialization includes an expanded list of topics that focus on the most crucial machine learning concepts (such as decision trees) and tools (such as TensorFlow).

Reinforcement learning further enhances these systems by enabling agents to make decisions based on environmental feedback, continually refining recommendations. Whether you’re looking to become a data scientist or simply want to deepen your understanding of the field of machine learning, enrolling in an online course can help you advance your career. While a machine learning model’s parameters can be identified, the hyperparameters used to create it cannot. Machine learning has been a field decades in the making, as scientists and professionals have sought to instill human-based learning methods in technology.

When companies today deploy artificial intelligence programs, they are most likely using machine learning — so much so that the terms are often used interchangeably, and sometimes ambiguously. Machine learning is a subfield of artificial intelligence that gives computers the ability to learn without explicitly being programmed. Artificial neural networks (ANNs), or connectionist systems, are computing systems vaguely inspired by the biological neural networks that constitute animal brains.

While ML is a powerful tool for solving problems, improving business operations and automating tasks, it’s also complex and resource-intensive, requiring deep expertise and significant data and infrastructure. Choosing the right algorithm for a task calls for a strong grasp of mathematics and statistics. Training ML algorithms often demands large amounts of high-quality data to produce accurate results. The results themselves, particularly those from complex algorithms such as deep neural networks, can be difficult to understand. Machine learning is a branch of artificial intelligence that enables algorithms to automatically learn from data without being explicitly programmed.

Machine learning computer programs are constantly fed these models, so the programs can eventually predict outputs based on a new set of inputs. There are various factors to consider, training models requires vastly more energy than running them after training, but the cost of running trained models is also growing as demands for ML-powered services builds. There is also the counter argument that the predictive capabilities of machine learning could potentially have a significant positive impact in a number of key areas, from the environment to healthcare, as demonstrated by Google DeepMind’s AlphaFold 2.

Logistic regression is straightforward to implement and train when carrying out simple binary classification, and can be extended to label more than two classes. The next step will be choosing an appropriate machine-learning model from the wide variety available. Each have strengths and weaknesses depending on the type of data, for example some are suited to handling images, some to text, and some to purely numerical data. A way to understand reinforcement learning is to think about how someone might learn to play an old-school computer game for the first time, when they aren’t familiar with the rules or how to control the game. While they may be a complete novice, eventually, by looking at the relationship between the buttons they press, what happens on screen and their in-game score, their performance will get better and better. Fueled by extensive research from companies, universities and governments around the globe, machine learning continues to evolve rapidly.

Some companies might end up trying to backport machine learning into a business use. Instead of starting with a focus on technology, businesses should start with a focus on a business problem or customer need that could be met with machine learning. Machine learning programs can be trained to examine medical images or other information and look for certain markers of illness, like a tool that can predict cancer risk based on a mammogram.

In the Critical Assessment of protein Structure Prediction contest, AlphaFold 2 was able to determine the 3D structure of a protein with an accuracy rivalling crystallography, the gold standard for convincingly modelling proteins. However, while it takes months for crystallography to return results, AlphaFold 2 can accurately model protein structures in hours. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. Training the deep-learning networks needed can take a very long time, requiring vast amounts of data to be ingested and iterated over as the system gradually refines its model in order to achieve the best outcome. The choice of which machine-learning model to use is typically based on many factors, such as the size and the number of features in the dataset, with each model having pros and cons. Eventually this process will settle on values for these weights and the bias that will allow the network to reliably perform a given task, such as recognizing handwritten numbers, and the network can be said to have “learned” how to carry out a specific task. Neural networks, whose structure is loosely inspired by that of the brain, are interconnected layers of algorithms, called neurons, which feed data into each other, with the output of the preceding layer being the input of the subsequent layer.

Machine learning (ML) has become a transformative technology across various industries. While it offers numerous advantages, it’s crucial to acknowledge the challenges that come with its increasing use. When watching the video, notice how the program is initially clumsy and unskilled but steadily improves with training until it becomes a champion. If you are new to the machine learning world and want to learn these skills from the basics to advance then you should check out our course Introduction to Machine Learning in which we have all the concepts you need to learn, mentored by industry-grade teachers. Based on the evaluation results, the model may need to be tuned or optimized to improve its performance.

In e-commerce, ML algorithms analyze customer behavior and preferences to recommend products tailored to individual needs. Similarly, streaming services use ML to suggest content based on user viewing history, improving user engagement and satisfaction. A computer program is said to learn from experience E concerning some class of tasks T and performance measure P, if its performance at tasks T, as measured by P, improves with experience E. Finally, it is essential to monitor the model’s performance in the production environment and perform maintenance tasks as required. This involves monitoring for data drift, retraining the model as needed, and updating the model as new data becomes available.

In July 2018, DeepMind reported that its AI agents had taught themselves how to play the 1999 multiplayer 3D first-person shooter Quake III Arena, well enough to beat teams of human players. These agents learned how to play the game using no more information than available to the human players, with their only input being the pixels on the screen as they tried out random actions in game, and feedback on their performance during each game. Each layer can be thought of as recognizing different features of the overall data.

There is a limit of 180 days of certificate eligibility, after which you must re-purchase the course to obtain a certificate. The Machine Learning Specialization is a foundational online program taught by Andrew Ng, an AI visionary who has led critical research at Stanford University and groundbreaking machine learning description work at Google Brain, Baidu, and Landing.AI to advance the AI field. Deep learning requires a great deal of computing power, which raises concerns about its economic and environmental sustainability. “The more layers you have, the more potential you have for doing complex things well,” Malone said.

machine learning description

Supervised learning, also known as supervised machine learning, is defined by its use of labeled datasets to train algorithms to classify data or predict outcomes accurately. As input data is fed into the model, the model adjusts its weights until it has been fitted appropriately. This occurs as part of the cross validation process to ensure that the model avoids overfitting or underfitting. Supervised learning helps organizations solve a variety of real-world problems at scale, such as classifying spam in a separate folder from your inbox. Some methods used in supervised learning include neural networks, naïve bayes, linear regression, logistic regression, random forest, and support vector machine (SVM).

Predictive insights are crucial for planning and resource allocation, making organizations more proactive rather than reactive. And check out machine learning–related job opportunities if you’re interested in working with McKinsey. Read about how an AI pioneer thinks companies can use machine learning to transform. From manufacturing to retail and banking to bakeries, even legacy companies are using machine learning to unlock new value or boost efficiency. In DeepLearning.AI and Stanford’s Machine Learning Specialization, you’ll master fundamental AI concepts and develop practical machine learning skills in the beginner-friendly, three-course program by AI visionary Andrew Ng. To help you get a better idea of how these types differ from one another, here’s an overview of the four different types of machine learning primarily in use today.

Machine learning-enabled AI tools are working alongside drug developers to generate drug treatments at faster rates than ever before. Essentially, these machine learning tools are fed millions of data points, and they configure them in ways that help researchers view what compounds are successful and what aren’t. Instead of spending millions of human hours on each trial, machine learning technologies can produce successful drug compounds in weeks or months. Trading firms are using machine learning to amass a huge lake of data and determine the optimal price points to execute trades. These complex high-frequency trading algorithms take thousands, if not millions, of financial data points into account to buy and sell shares at the right moment. Most computer programs rely on code to tell them what to execute or what information to retain (better known as explicit knowledge).

Composed of a deep network of millions of data points, DeepFace leverages 3D face modeling to recognize faces in images in a way very similar to that of humans. That same year, Google develops Google Brain, which earns a reputation for the categorization capabilities of its deep neural networks. Machine learning has also been an asset in predicting customer trends and behaviors. These machines look holistically at individual purchases to determine what types of items are selling and what items will be selling in the future. For example, maybe a new food has been deemed a “super food.” A grocery store’s systems might identify increased purchases of that product and could send customers coupons or targeted advertisements for all variations of that item. Additionally, a system could look at individual purchases to send you future coupons.

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This knowledge contains anything that is easily written or recorded, like textbooks, videos or manuals. With machine learning, computers gain tacit knowledge, or the knowledge we gain from personal experience and context. This type of knowledge is hard to transfer from one person to the next via written or verbal communication. GPT-3 is a neural network trained on billions of English language articles available on the open web and can generate articles and answers in response to text prompts.

Natural language processing is a field of machine learning in which machines learn to understand natural language as spoken and written by humans, instead of the data and numbers normally used to program computers. This allows machines to recognize language, understand it, and respond to it, as well as create new text and translate between languages. Natural language processing enables familiar technology like chatbots and digital assistants like Siri or Alexa.

machine learning description

For ML projects, this includes documenting data sets, model runs and code, with detailed descriptions of data sources, preprocessing steps, model architectures, hyperparameters and experiment results. Answering these questions is an essential part of planning a machine learning project. It helps the organization understand the project’s focus (e.g., research, product development, data analysis) and the types of ML expertise required (e.g., computer vision, NLP, predictive modeling).

Simply put, machine learning uses data, statistics and trial and error to “learn” a specific task without ever having to be specifically coded for the task. Perhaps the most famous demonstration of the efficacy of machine-learning systems is the 2016 triumph of the Google DeepMind AlphaGo AI over a human grandmaster in Go, a feat that wasn’t expected until 2026. Over the course of a game of Go, there are so many possible moves that searching through each of them in advance to identify the best play is too costly from a computational standpoint. Instead, AlphaGo was trained how to play the game by taking moves played by human experts in 30 million Go games and feeding them into deep-learning neural networks. In the past two decades, machine learning has gone from a niche academic interest to a  central part of the tech industry. It has given us self-driving cars, speech and image recognition, effective web search, fraud detection, a vastly improved understanding of the human genome, and many other advances.

Semi-supervised learning falls between unsupervised learning (without any labeled training data) and supervised learning (with completely labeled training data). Some of the training examples are missing training labels, yet many machine-learning researchers have found that unlabeled data, when used in conjunction with a small amount of labeled data, can produce a considerable improvement in learning accuracy. In supervised machine learning, algorithms are trained on labeled data sets that include tags describing each piece of data. In other words, the algorithms are fed data that includes an “answer key” describing how the data should be interpreted.

Classification is used to train systems on identifying an object and placing it in a sub-category. For instance, email filters use machine learning to automate incoming email flows for primary, promotion and spam inboxes. Like all systems with AI, machine learning needs different methods to establish parameters, actions and end values. Machine learning-enabled programs come in various types that explore different options and evaluate different factors. There is a range of machine learning types that vary based on several factors like data size and diversity.

Ethical considerations, data privacy and regulatory compliance are also critical issues that organizations must address as they integrate advanced AI and ML technologies into their operations. Much of the time, this means Python, the most widely used language in machine learning. Python is simple and readable, making it easy for coding newcomers or developers familiar with other languages to pick up. Python also boasts a wide range of data science and ML libraries and frameworks, including TensorFlow, PyTorch, Keras, scikit-learn, pandas and NumPy.

As machine learning models, particularly deep learning models, become more complex, their decisions become less interpretable. Developing methods to make models more interpretable without sacrificing performance is an important challenge. It affects the usability, trustworthiness, and ethical considerations of deploying machine learning systems. Overfitting occurs when a machine learning model learns the details and noise in the training data to the extent that it negatively impacts the model’s performance on new data. On the other hand, underfitting happens when a model cannot learn the underlying pattern of the data, resulting in poor performance on both the training and testing data. Balancing the model’s complexity and its ability to generalize is a critical challenge.

The gathered data is then split, into a larger proportion for training, say about 70%, and a smaller proportion for evaluation, say the remaining 30%. This evaluation data allows the trained model to be tested, to see how well it is likely to perform on real-world data. An example of reinforcement learning is Google DeepMind’s Deep Q-network, which has beaten humans in a wide range of vintage video games.

Deep learning uses neural networks—based on the ways neurons interact in the human brain—to ingest and process data through multiple neuron layers that can recognize increasingly complex features of the data. For example, an early neuron layer might recognize something as being in a specific shape; building on this knowledge, a later layer might be able to identify the shape as a stop sign. Similar to machine learning, deep learning uses iteration to self-correct and to improve its prediction capabilities.