Machine Learning (ML): A way of building software that learns patterns from examples in data, instead of only following rules a person wrote.
Example
A spam filter learns from thousands of example emails which messages are likely to be spam.
Why Machine Learning (ML) matters for IT interns
Machine learning is part of many products, so you may work on features that use it even outside data roles.
Where you will hear it
You will hear this term in data, analytics, and AI work, and increasingly in general software teams too. If someone uses it and you are not sure what they mean in your project, it is completely fine to ask; every team uses terms a little differently.
Related terms
- Dataset: A collection of related data used for analysis or for training and testing models, often stored as a table or…
- Generative AI: AI that creates new content — text, code, images or audio — based on patterns it learned from large amounts…
- Large Language Model (LLM): A type of generative AI model trained on huge amounts of text that can understand and write human-like…
- Model: In machine learning, the result of training on data — something that takes new input and produces a…
- NoSQL: Databases that don’t use traditional tables with fixed columns.
- Prediction: The output a model gives for new input — a value, a category or a probability.
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Related guides
Frequently asked questions
What is Machine Learning (ML)?
A way of building software that learns patterns from examples in data, instead of only following rules a person wrote.
What is an example of Machine Learning (ML)?
A spam filter learns from thousands of example emails which messages are likely to be spam.
Why does Machine Learning (ML) matter for IT interns?
Machine learning is part of many products, so you may work on features that use it even outside data roles.
Explore more internship terms
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About the author
Dhaivat has 16+ years of experience in the IT industry, working on AI and cloud technologies, project delivery, and engineering leadership. He has interviewed and mentored many interns, wrote The Lost Intern, and runs the non-commercial Career Impact Initiative, mentoring students for free.