Machine intelligence is the ability of a machine to take in information, learn from it and act in ways that appear intelligent. In most contexts it means the same thing as artificial intelligence. The difference is mostly one of emphasis and history.
Machine intelligence vs artificial intelligence
Some people prefer “machine intelligence” because it avoids the word “artificial”. Their point is that the intelligence is real, even if it runs on a machine. Others use the term to put the spotlight on learning systems, such as machine learning and neural networks, rather than hand-written rules.
In practice, the two terms overlap almost completely. If you see them used differently, check how the author defines them.
A term older than “AI”
Alan Turing wrote a 1948 report called “Intelligent Machinery” and asked “Can machines think?” in his 1950 paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence”. These ideas came before the term “artificial intelligence” was coined in 1955. The phrase “machine intelligence” carries that earlier tradition.
Where you will see the term
- Research groups and institutes, such as the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), which studies AI safety
- Academic journals and conferences that use it in their names
- Company research teams focused on machine learning
What machine intelligence includes
- Machine learning: learning patterns from data
- Computer vision: understanding images and video
- Natural language processing: working with human language
- Robotics: sensing and acting in the physical world
Why the wording matters
For readers, the terms are interchangeable. For writers and marketers, “machine intelligence” can signal a technical, research-led focus, while “AI” is the term most people search for and recognise.