India, Oct. 8 -- Machine learning is a key aspect of artificial intelligence, but what do machines "learn", and how? They cannot think, understand or know things the way humans do, but they can be trained to process information using a physical setup that is similar to that in our brains. Just as our brain cells, called neurons, communicate across the network connecting them, machine learning utilises an artificial neural network that emulates these functions.

The winners of this year's Nobel Prize in Physics, announced on Tuesday, are pioneers who developed early artificial neural networks. American physicist John Hopfield, 91, and British-Canadian computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton, 76, used fundamental concepts of physics to develop t...