AI buzzword dictionary
What is Machine learning?
A way of building AI where a computer learns patterns from examples rather than following hand-written rules.
What this actually means
Rather than programming every rule ('if the email mentions a lottery, mark it spam'), developers show the system many labelled examples and let it find the patterns.
Most modern AI, including language models, is built with machine learning.
Example
A bank trains a model on past transactions marked 'genuine' or 'fraud'. It then flags new transactions that look like the fraudulent ones.
Where you may meet it
Recommendations on streaming services, fraud detection, predictive text, medical image screening.
Last reviewed: 25 September 2026