This essay will define machine learning and describe some of the different areas of machine learning. It will summarize some of the algorithms used to achieve machine learning and describe some of the situations in which they can be applied, then compare them to human learning techniques and comment on the similarities and differences. Raymond Kurzweil's singularity theories and his opposing views will then be discussed. Introduction Machine learning is having a great impact on the way computers can be used in many ways. There are many implementations that vary in complexity. Google completes sentences when a search term is entered (Economist, 2014) and Netflix has the ability to recommend films you might like to IBM's "Watson" cognitive computing program that defeated human adversaries in danger. The area is constantly growing, Facebook has recently invested in its Artificial Intelligence (AI) team which is working to extract the emotions and behaviors implicit in posts on its site (Simonite,2013) and IBM is investing a billion dollars in a new division to find uses for Watson (Economist, 2014). Google has seen the importance of artificial intelligence and machine learning, as can be demonstrated by the number of AI companies they have purchased. They have just added to their portfolio of recent AI-related purchases with the acquisition of Deep Mind, purchased for a reported figure of four hundred million pounds. It's impressive to say that Deep Mind hadn't even released a product at this point. (Bradshaw et al, 2014) Very little is known about what deep minds technology is capable of, but it is known to be in the area of ​​general machine learning algorithms. It has been said that De... the center of the paper... of the brain itself. His reasons for skepticism are that human consciousness is the result of nonlinear interactions between the billions of cells that make up the human body. However, Nicolellis believes that computer technology will be implanted in our brains to improve brain function before a computer system capable of recreating human consciousness is possible. (Regelado, 2014) Nicollelis' Duke Lab recently published a study that demonstrated a way to allow rats to see infrared light. They achieve this by attaching an infrared sensor to electrodes implanted in a section of the brain called the somatosensory cortex. This is the first experiment to successfully use a neural implant to give an animal a new sense. (Thomson et al, 2014). This shows that Nicollelis is serious with his claims and that his opposition to Kurzweil's claims carries weight..