How does machine learning differ from traditional programming?

The answer

In traditional programming, a developer writes explicit rules (if-then logic) for the computer to follow. In machine learning, the computer analyzes large datasets to discover patterns and derive its own rules. For example, instead of coding 'a cat has pointed ears and whiskers,' you feed the system thousands of labeled cat photos and it learns to identify distinguishing features automatically. The model improves with more data, which is why modern AI requires massive training datasets - GPT-4 was reportedly trained on roughly 13 trillion tokens of text.