Accurate and fast machine learning (ML) algorithms are highly vital in artificial intelligence (AI) applications. In complex dataset problems, traditional ML methods such as radial basis function neural network (RBFN), sparse coding (SC) using dictionary learning, and particle swarm optimization (PSO) provide trivial results, large structure, slow training, and/or slow testing. This dissertation introduces four novel ML techniques: the multi-column RBFN network (MCRN), the projected dictionary learning algorithm (PDL) and the multi-column adaptive and non-adaptive particle swarm optimization techniques (MC-APSO and MC-PSO). These novel techniques provide efficient alternatives for traditional ML techniques. Compared to traditional ML techniques, the novel ML techniques demonstrate more accurate results, faster training and testing timing, and parallelized structured solutions. MCRN deploys small RBFNs in a parallel structure to speed up both training and testing. Each RBFN is trained with a subset of the dataset and the overall structure provides results that are more accurate. PDL introduces a conceptual dictionary learning method in updating the dictionary atoms with the reconstructed input blocks. This method improves the sparsity of extracted features and hence, the image denoising results. MC-PSO and MC-APSO provide fast and more accurate alternatives to the PSO and APSO slow evolutionary techniques. MC-PSO and MC-APSO use multi-column parallelized RBFN structure to improve results and speed with a wide range of classification dataset problems. The novel techniques are trained and tested using benchmark dataset problems and the results are compared with the state-of-the-art counterpart techniques to evaluate their performance. Novel techniques’ results show superiority over techniques in accuracy and speed in most of the experimental results, which make them good alternatives in solving difficult ML problems.