Introduction to Machine Learning

Slides | Video | Code

Table of Contents:

• What is Machine Learning?
  
  • Two approaches to Intelligence
    
    • The Artificial Intelligence Approach
      
    • The Machine Learning Approach
      

What is Machine Learning?

A sub-discipline of Artificial Intelligence.

• Definition #1: creating machines (e.g., computer programs) that improve automatically with experience
• Definition #2: the field of study that gives computers the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed.

Two approaches to Intelligence:

Let’s talk about programming a computer to play chess. There are two main approaches the classic artificial intelligence approach and the machine learning approach.

The Artificial Intelligence Approach:

Develop a heuristic (some sort of way to tell the value of a given piece)… let’s say:

Piece	Points
Queen	12
Rook	8
Bishop	7
Knight	7
Pawn	1

An artificial intelligence approach would, for any configuration of a chess board:

• establish valid moves
• search all possible moves in the future
• select te move that maximizes the possible points.

A Machine Learning Approach:

In contrast to the artificial intelligence approach, a machine learning approach would be based on data. The idea would be to gather a bunch of chess game examples and for any configuation:

• examine the database of moves of winning games
• find the board configuration that is the ‘closest’ and make the appropriate move that previously led to winning.

So, the main idea is that often times artificial intelligence refers to rule and heuristic based appraoches to solving problems, while machine learning approaches refer to utilizing data from previous occurences to predict what the best approach would be.