Machine learning is a subset of artificial intelligence in the field of computer science that often uses statistical techniques to give computers the ability to "learn" (i.e., progressively improve performance on a specific task) with data, without being explicitly programmed.
The name machine learning was coined in 1959 by Arthur Samuel. Evolved from the study of pattern recognition and computational learning theory in artificial intelligence,machine learning explores the study and construction of algorithms that can learn from and make predictions on data[4] – such algorithms overcome following strictly static program instructions by making data-driven predictions or decisions, through building a model from sample inputs. Machine learning is employed in a range of computing tasks where designing and programming explicit algorithms with good performance is difficult or infeasible; example applications include email filtering, detection of network intruders or malicious insiders working towards a data breach,[6] optical character recognition (OCR), learning to rank, and computer vision.
it is a very broad question, the basic and definition can be found online when you google them but I would suggest to use the following keywords in your search:
Machine learning is the science of getting computers to act without being explicitly programmed. In the past decade, machine learning has given us self-driving cars, practical speech recognition, effective web search, and a vastly improved understanding of the human genome. Machine learning is so pervasive today that you probably use it dozens of times a day without knowing it. Many researchers also think it is the best way to make progress towards human-level AI.