Machine Learning Basics

Abstract

The idea of making intelligent, sentient, and self-aware machines is not something that suddenly came into existence in the last few years. In fact a lot of lore from Greek mythology talks about intelligent machines and inventions having self-awareness and intelligence of their own. The origins and the evolution of the computer have been really revolutionary over a period of several centuries, starting from the basic Abacus and its descendant the slide rule in the 17th Century to the first general purpose computer designed by Charles Babbage in the 1800s. In fact, once computers started evolving with the invention of the Analytical Engine by Babbage and the first computer program, which was written by Ada Lovelace in 1842, people started wondering and contemplating that could there be a time when computers or machines truly become intelligent and start thinking for themselves. In fact, the renowned computer scientist, Alan Turing, was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer science, algorithms, and formal language and addressed concepts like artificial intelligence and Machine Learning as early as the 1950s. This brief insight into the evolution of making machines learn is just to give you an idea of something that has been out there since centuries but has recently started gaining a lot of attention and focus.