Difference between Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and Deep Learning (DL)
Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and Deep Learning (DL) are three interconnected technologies that are often discussed in the realm of advanced computing and data analysis. They represent a hierarchy of concepts and technologies that enable machines to perform tasks that typically require human intelligence, but each term refers to distinct aspects within the field of AI.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the broadest concept, encompassing any technique that enables computers to mimic human behavior and intelligence. AI includes anything from simple programs that can solve specific problems to complex systems that can understand and interpret the world around them. The goal of AI is to create systems that can perform tasks that would normally require human intelligence, such as recognizing speech, interpreting complex data, making decisions, and translating languages.
Machine Learning (ML)
Machine Learning (ML) is a subset of AI and refers to algorithms that allow computers to learn from and make predictions or decisions based on data. Unlike traditional programming, where tasks are explicitly programmed for every scenario, ML enables systems to learn and improve from experience without being explicitly programmed for every possibility. This learning process involves feeding large amounts of data to the algorithm, allowing it to adjust and improve its performance over time. ML algorithms can be categorized into supervised learning, unsupervised learning, and reinforcement learning, each with different approaches to learning from data.
Another branch of AI different from Machine Learning (ML) is Robotic Process Automation (RPA). RPA focuses on automating repetitive and rule-based tasks that previously required human intervention, such as data entry or transaction management. Unlike ML, which learns from data to improve its performance over time, RPA follows predefined rules to execute specific tasks. RPA can be seen as a way to automate business processes without the need for machine learning or data understanding.
Deep Learning (DL)
Deep Learning (DL), a further subset of ML, involves artificial neural networks with many layers (hence “deep”). These neural networks attempt to simulate the behavior of the human brain — albeit in a very simplified form — allowing the machine to learn from large amounts of unstructured data. Deep learning has been responsible for many of the recent advancements in AI, including speech recognition, image recognition, and natural language processing. The key advantage of deep learning is its ability to perform feature extraction automatically, learning complex patterns in data without human intervention.
The relationship between these three concepts can be visualized as concentric circles with AI as the outermost circle, encompassing all of AI technology, including ML. ML sits within AI as a subset that focuses on learning from data, and DL is nested within ML, representing an even more specialized subset that uses neural networks to learn from vast amounts of data.
A branch of ML different from Deep Learning (DL) is Information Retrieval (IR). IR involves retrieving relevant information from large datasets, such as documents or web pages, in response to a user query. This field uses ML techniques to enhance the effectiveness of finding relevant and pertinent information among a vast amount of unstructured data. IR is crucial for search engines, recommendation systems, and other applications that require the ability to filter and present relevant information to users.
While AI, ML, and DL are related and often used interchangeably, they refer to distinct levels of machine intelligence and learning capabilities. AI covers all techniques that enable machines to mimic human intelligence, ML is focused on algorithms that learn from data, and DL dives deeper into mimicking the human brain’s structure to learn from large datasets.