Home Data Science What is the difference between AI and ML?

What is the difference between AI and ML?

Wiki AI ML

The following quote can already help to understand what distinguishes Artificial Intelligence from Machine Learning. More details can be found in this Wiki article. 

"When you're fundraising, it's artificial intelligence. When you're hiring, it's machine learning. When you're implementing, it's linear regression."

 

Definition Artificial Intelligence (AI)

After previous articles on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), it is clear that you cannot define a difference if you lack a definition.

When differentiating AI and ML, the distinction between weak and strong artificial intelligence (AI) plays a role:

Strong Artificial Intelligence 

But let's take as definition of Articifical Intelligence (AI) a cognitive system equal to humans. In that case, the difference to Machine Learning (ML) is very big. ML is an informatic/mathematical method to make predictions or decisions. For an AI, ML is then at most one tool among many to act autonomously in a higher-level, more holistic system. AI could therefore make use of ML to make a decision - but not necessarily.

With weak AI 

If the definition of AI is that of weak AI, both terms, AI and ML, are often actually used to describe the same thing.

The specific use case is, for example, to relieve humans of the work of classifying an e-mail as spam. An "artificial intelligence" then takes over the task of reading the e-mail and assigning it a label. But in fact, what is actually meant is the operation of the algorithm that does the classification. And this is typically an ML algorithm.

Know more?

Would you like to delve deeper into the topic of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning?
Simply get in touch with us!

Your contact person for Data Science
Christiane Maria Kallfass is a Recruiting and Marketing Specialist at s-peers AG
Christiane Grimm
Inside Sales

Published by:

Franziskus Heep

Professional Analytics consultant

author

How did you like the article?

How helpful was this post?

Click on a star to rate!

Average rating 4.7 / 5.
Number of ratings: 10

No votes so far! Be the first person to rate this post!

INFORMATION

More information

20251127_Feature Update

SAC Live Connect to Snowflake – explained step by step

How does SAC Live Connect work with Snowflake? In this guide, we will show you step by step how to set up a...
Cover_Photo_SAC_AI_ML_Features_at_a_glance

SAC AI features explained: Joule, Just Ask, and Smart Predict

This wiki explains how to use Smart Predict to create automated forecasting models...
Visual Woman and robot look at each other at a desk, the robot is sitting

SAP Business AI & AI Units

When it comes to AI in the SAP universe, there are basically two approaches...
Visual Databricks and BDC Wiki

What is Databricks? What is the BDC? The ultimate guide to the perfect combination!

In today's data-driven business world, the ability to efficiently analyze and use large amounts of data is crucial for...
Your guide to successful SAC migration

SAC Migration by Q2 2026: The Guide to Transitioning to the Optimized Story Experience

The time for the conversion of SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC)...
Hands with three stars representing the different technologies: SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP Business Data Cloud, SAP Datasphere.

Feature update for SAP Business Data Cloud, Analytics Cloud, and Datasphere

This wiki article summarizes the most important content of the webinar on the topic:...
Lord of the Rings association with connection to SQL and dbt as fighters.

SQL and dbt: The future of modern data transformation

The article describes data processing in companies. Both...