# Artificial intelligence and machine [[learning]] aren't what you think By:: [[Brian Heath]] 2022-08-23 A lot of [[energy]] is spent on machine learning and artificial intelligence as the pinnacle of analytics and [[technology]]. But I think a lot of people are largely unaware of what these things are. In fact, most people probably believe that they are the same thing. First, artificial intelligence is often a broader field of study where machine learning is just a special subcategory. Second, artificial intelligence is about machines developing and becoming conscious. We are a very long way from doing that because we don't have a clue about what consciousness is or how it works. Brain science has a long way to go and nothing called artificial intelligence on the internet is artificial intelligence. Third, machine learning is human-written algorithms that take advantage of modern computing speeds and memory to quickly process millions of combinations of [[data]] to find trends that are often obscured by the processing limits of the human brain. In other words, machine learning is a black box of virtual statistics, and good luck making sense of it within the real world. It is useful, but just know what you are getting yourself into as the machine isn't aware of anything - it's just fancy statistics. So, what do people mean when they discuss artificial intelligence and machine learning? I think [[Seth Godin]] said it best in his [[Akimbo Podcast]] that artificial intelligence is whatever computers can do now that they couldn't do before. Humans tend to get excited about technologies and make wild guesses about the future. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are currently riding this wave and eventually finding their rightful place and uses. Just know that these things are not going to magically solve the problems of [[the human condition]] anytime soon. #### Related Items [[Artificial Intelligence]] [[Machine Learning]] [[Analytics]] [[Statistics]] [[Consciousness]] [[Computers]]