I think 'machine learning' is so complex that people just don't feel like trying to explain it. I think it is very simple(outside of the secret sauce part) to

I think 'machine learning' is so complex that people just don't feel like trying to explain it. I think it is very simple(outside of the secret sauce part) to people who know it, so they don't feel the need to explain it. People who haven't sat down and thought about it see it as magical. As an example(lifted from Programming Collaborative Intelligence by Segaran ) say you want to recommend movies to people. You have them rate movies. Then you take people in pairs and compare movies they have both rated to produce a distance between those two people. When you want to recommend a movie to Joe, you take the people who are closest to Joe and then find a movie that they rate highly that Joe has not rated, and suggest that to Joe. The secret sauce is in coming up with the distance function.