Machine Learning vs. Deep Learning vs. AI
Untangling the terminology that gets used interchangeably — and shouldn't be.
The nesting
Artificial intelligence is the broad goal of building systems that perform tasks requiring intelligence. Machine learning is one approach to AI — systems that improve from data rather than explicit rules. Deep learning is a subset of machine learning using multi-layered neural networks.
Why the distinction matters
A rules-based expert system and a transformer-based LLM are both 'AI' by the broad definition, but they behave nothing alike — knowing which layer of the stack you're actually discussing avoids a lot of confused conversations.
Where LLMs sit
Today's large language models are deep learning systems, specifically transformer architectures trained at massive scale — a very recent and specific point in a decades-long lineage of AI research.
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