Machine learning and deep learning are successive subsets of artificial intelligence

Machine learning lets computers learn from data instead of relying on programming

ML is a core part of artificial intelligence and is foundational to applications like chatbots, fraud detection, and self-driving cars. Businesses are also adopting it to improve efficiency and identify patterns in data, though the latter may be inaccurate.

AI vs. machine learning vs. deep learning

Machine learning is best understood with visuals. A collection of the best 9 images, videos and flowcharts that explain what it is and how it works.

Technologies labeled “AI” have historically lost that title after widespread adoption

Generative AI is the latest entry in a recurring cycle where emerging tools start as "AI" until they become common software, like databases or machine learning. Generative AI and large language models may be the next platform shift after smartphones and the Web.

Using deep learning to analyze tumors

The explosive growth of life sciences data is driving artificial intelligence methods to gain traction in biology and medicine — including cancer research.

As of 2025, artificial intelligence systems remain narrow and specialized

Efforts are ongoing to create artificial general intelligence, where machines outperform humans across a wide range of cognitive tasks, including those for which they have not been specifically trained. Current models utilize machine learning and neural networks to perform tasks for which they are programmed, leveraging provided training data.

How generative AI differs from machine learning

Compared to machine learning - which is sort of like teaching a toddler how to recognize what a dog looks like by showing them images of one - generative AI is like teaching that same child how to actually draw a dog. Unlike machine learning, generative AI can actually generate. Read this article for a more in-depth comparison between these two types of artificial intelligence.

Anthropic's interpretability team discusses how AI models' thinking mimics biology

Just as humans engage in complex behaviors to survive and reproduce, teams of experts in neuroscience, virology, mathematics, and other disciplines argue that large language models develop complex mechanisms to achieve their goals. These mechanisms can be manipulated to assess how they modify outputs—much like stimulating individual neurons—to uncover how LLMs "think."

What are neural networks and why do they matter?

Learn how a neural network works, why it matters, and how it can be trained to recognize patterns, classify data, and forecast future events.

LLMs are trained via modeling, imitation learning, and reinforcement learning

Training large language models begins with pretraining the model to predict the next word in a sequence based on finding patterns in massive amounts of text. Patterns are then fine-tuned to model human-written dialogue and to align responses with user preferences.

Malicious use of deepfakes can be found in scams, misinformation, and disinformation

Artificial neural networks can identify an individual's physical characteristics when provided with training data, such as real footage of the person speaking. Graphics techniques overlay these with matching characteristics from another real or generated person to create novel footage of things that have never taken place in reality.

What does it mean for AI to "understand" something?

This Quanta article discusses how programmers are working to create a reliable test for the depth and extent of the knowledge of machines. What does AI know and how does it know it, if it knows anything at all? There's been progress, but it hasn't been easy. Even humans can still be fooled some of the time.

Transformer architecture was the breakthrough that made AI chatbots possible

It changed how text was translated from a sequential, "one word at a time" method to one where every word in a text is processed in parallel. Advances in positional encoding and self-attention also helped models recognize context and word order better.

AI systems identify patterns involving physics and time through 'world models'

These realistic virtual environments, such as driving simulations seen in video games, allow these systems to "learn" properties about reality beyond what can be captured in samples of text, images, and videos. Training AI in these simulated environments can help develop "physical AI" for automated robotic systems. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

The term 'artificial intelligence' was coined in 1956

Dartmouth professor John McCarthy introduced the term during a summer workshop aimed at exploring how to make machines perform human-like tasks. Two years later, Perceptron Mark I became one of the first neural network machines.

A breakdown of algorithms, how they are constructed, and their applications

Algorithms are instructions for accomplishing a goal and typically take the form of a step-by-step procedure. Given the conditions, these procedures can take various paths, increasing an algorithm's complexity. While traditional computer algorithms are programmed to account for all possible scenarios within a given process, machine learning systems build their own rules from data-driven patterns.

AI may enable smart cities to drastically improve public safety

By utilizing machine learning techniques to analyze real-time monitoring reports against facial recognition databases, artificial intelligence can enhance the identification of criminals and coordinate an appropriate emergency response across various scenarios.

CUDA was Nvidia’s first step into artificial intelligence

CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture) is a parallel computing platform that was developed by Nvidia in the mid-2000s. By letting people perform computations in parallel, rather than sequentially, CUDA allowed people to compute large amounts of data quickly. CUDA has been used to build machine-learning models as well.

Watch how algorithms can be designed to train themselves and self-improve without human input, to the point where the optimized code is too complex for programmers to understand.

Diffusion models generate nontext media by adding and removing noise from a dataset

Unlike text-based AI tools, which rely on large language models to recognize patterns in text, diffusion models use a reward system to generate images, video, audio, and 3D models. They can also be customized to match a user’s style.

Various types of memory, each serving unique functions, create a complex brain system

These forms of memory, which can overlap in daily life, have been sorted into broad categories, such as short-term and long-term memory, and subtypes such as implicit memory, which uses saved information without conscious awareness that it’s being recalled.

DeepSeek is a Chinese AI startup that rattled US competitors when it made an AI model much faster and cheaper than they did

DeepSeek unveiled an AI model in 2025 that it said was made in two months for roughly $6M. For context, OpenAI has suggested it took over $100M to make its AI model GPT-4. The news rattled the stocks of American tech companies, including leading chipmaker Nvidia.

DALL-E generates images by turning words into shared picture meanings

DALL-E first uses a model called CLIP to associate pictures with specific words, followed by a model called GLIDE, which slowly removes noise from random dots until a clear image appears that matches the prompt.

Palantir's technology is part of a larger shift in modern warfare

As warfare becomes increasingly technical, Palantir executives say artificial intelligence is going to revolutionize how military leaders in war zones make decisions. They argue that this shift towards "algorithmic warfare," or the integration of large technological enhancements like AI, will enable militaries to be more powerful and make fewer mistakes.

The first neural devices were cochlear implants, designed to treat hearing loss

Neural interfaces connect with our nervous system to restore or enhance abilities, such as hearing or movement. These neuroprostheses have enabled the restoration of mobility, communication, and activities of daily living that might otherwise require a caregiver.

Today's massive data centers evolved from single-room mainframes

Punch card computers from the late 1940s were used to store and process a company's data locally before the advent of desktop computers. As the amount of data and company sizes increased alongside the miniaturization of technology, mainframes were replaced by local server rooms and external facilities with interconnected servers running cloud-based and AI software.

Problem solving, problem recognition, and learning ability makes up intelligence

Psychologists have several theories from which the concept of intelligence is explained, including general and multiple intelligences. Although IQ is used to quantify intelligence, issues like its cultural biases have spurred debate.

When you complete a CAPTCHA on a website to prove you are human, you may be unknowingly training algorithms for self-driving cars, whose systems require training data to help identify crosswalks, bicycles, and other outdoor objects.

English mathematician Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer algorithm a century before computers existed and hypothesized that computing devices would one day be able to compose music—foreseeing the generative AI systems of today.

This site reaches millions of visitors who are tired of AI chatbots and seeking human connection. Pretend to be an AI chatbot and ask questions, provide answers, and draw for people in real time.

Electrical grids worldwide must double their power delivery capacity by 2050 to meet surging demand from AI and electric vehicles.

Learn how monoclonal antibodies, which mimic the body's antibodies, can fight diseases like Ebola.

Researchers believe the brain consolidates memories, processes emotions, and plans for the future during dream states

Crows are believed to have intelligence on par with a seven-year-old child and demonstrate complex behaviors, from problem-solving with tools to recognizing human faces.

Browse a detailed visual analysis of over 200,000 similes—comparisons that often use 'like' or 'as'—from popular fiction to see how frequently writers the same idiomatic expressions.

How Amazon operates a 'flywheel' business model, a self-reinforcing cycle that drives continuous growth

As of 2025, the most cited papers in science include a review of graphene, methods to improve image recognition, streamlining electron density calculations, and optimizing protein studies.

Explore the animals that populate the depths of the ocean, from fish and coral in the first few hundred feet, all the way down to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

Some Pokémon have been named after real and fictional organisms, while some real-world species have been named after Pokémon, such as Chilicola charizard and Binburrum zapdos.

In 2025, four executives from large tech companies were given positions in the US Army Reserves—including Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar, which reinforced Palantir's ties with the US military and its role as a leading defense partner.

Memecoins are a type of cryptocurrency—a form of digital currency with a wide variety of uses—created around popular 'memes,' or viral internet jokes.

About 2,000 US babies are born annually without some portion of their limbs, potentially leading to a lifetime of pricey prosthetics.

Gerrymandering works through two techniques: cracking opposing voters across districts to dilute their power, and packing them into a few to waste their votes in lopsided majorities.

Indefinite cloning of some endangered species may not sustain their longevity because cloning success rates decrease as genetic mutations accumulate.

Long before Major League Baseball began allowing instant replay for balls and strikes, an umpire reluctantly used the technology to determine whether a hit was a home run, a move that inadvertently ushered in a new era for the sport.

Neutron stars, the remains of some massive stars after they explode in a supernova, are the densest directly observable objects in the universe.

The United States is one of only around two dozen countries with a fully federal system of government, in which power is divided between national and state governments.

Dirty lightning is a thunderstorm created from friction between rising and falling flows of ash and smoke during volcanic eruptions.

The word 'jazz' evolved from 'jasm,' 19th-century American slang for 'energy'

In 1945, Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí and legendary animator Walt Disney began collaborating on a short film that was not completed until 2003, years after both men had died.

Abraham Lincoln was almost assassinated weeks before his inauguration as he traveled from Illinois to DC through Baltimore in 1861; it took two independent claims for Lincoln to be convinced the threat was real