Well, if you use the term "machine learning", you've got to accept that the "learning" there doesn't have all the same connotations than the word "learning" has

Well, if you use the term "machine learning", you've got to accept that the "learning" there doesn't have all the same connotations than the word "learning" has in general. But if we just define learning to be getting better at something "autonomously", machine learning has that property. The programmer codes the learning algorithm, but the program gets better at the task itself by example.