Machine learning is a type of artificial intelligence that uses algorithms and data to automatically analyze and make decisions without human intervention. It learns from experience by being trained on large amounts of data rather than being explicitly programmed. There are three main types of machine learning: supervised learning, unsupervised learning, and reinforcement learning. Machine learning has many real-world applications such as traffic prediction, virtual assistants, email spam filtering, and product recommendations. Some of the most common programming languages used for machine learning include Python, Java, C, C++, R, and JavaScript.