Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning: A Primer for Investors Posted on : Sep 22 - 2017

Keeping up with technology trends can be exhausting and confusing. Many times, the terms used to describe technology investing opportunities aren't always defined and can leave investors with more questions than answers.

For example, there's a lot of talk about artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning these days, and their potential for investors. So let's take a quick look at how NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA), a graphics process maker with a leadership position in these spaces, defines each of them -- and what the company's potential is in these businesses.

What is artificial intelligence?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is sometimes thought of as the intelligence we see from robots in movies or television shows. That level of AI isn't possible yet, and instead, tech companies that are working on artificial intelligence right now are usually doing what's called "narrow AI."

According to NVIDIA, narrow is AI when hardware and software work together to perform very specific tasks as well as, or even better than, humans do.

An example of this is Facebook's ability to suggest which friends to tag when you upload a photo to its website. This narrow AI is able to look at the image, identify people with 98% accuracy, and do it faster than humans can.

So when you think of artificial intelligence, remember that it's not the general AI we all usually think of, but rather computers doing very specific tasks.

What is machine learning?

Machine learning is another buzz phrase that's gained a lot of attention in the tech sector lately. Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos has told investors that they should "watch this space," and nearly every major tech company is focused on using this type of technology to make its businesses better. But what is it?

NVIDIA defines machine learning like this: "Machine Learning at its most basic is the practice of using algorithms to parse data, learn from it, and then make a determination or prediction about something in the world."

Instead of preprogramming software to complete a specific task, as narrow AI does, machine learning uses algorithms that allow a computer to learn from the vast amounts of data it receives so it can complete a task on its own.

Intel puts it this way: "Machine learning is this idea of marrying algorithms and statistics" so that the machine can learn from new data. View More