If you’ve been following the tech news recently, you’ll have noticed that there has been a lot of attention paid to the concept of “Deep Learning” in the last few months. Deep Learning is the new way of saying AI, or artificial intelligence, without actually going quite that far. For one thing, AI has strong connotations, and for another, we’re not quite there yet.
But Google recently revealed that they were using a deep learning system to deal with unique queries, and that it was doing better than humans did. In even more recent news, their deep learning system has been used to enable a computer to beat a professional human player at the ancient strategy game Go, something that has long been though an important step in the development of artificial intelligence.
It follows that the concept (and surrounding technology) of deep learning is becoming massively popular, and the potential applications could well be…limitless. Now you can teach yourself deep learning. (Caveat: You already need to be a pretty good data scientist or engineer.)
Free Deep Learning Course
Google’s TensorFlow (their deep learning division and origin of GoogleBrain), and Udacity, a recognised online university, have collaborated to offer a free online deep learning course available to everybody with an interest in machine learning and the latest developments in the field. It covers topics such as training and optimising neural networks, learning systems, and hyper-parameter training.
Of course, to get the most out of it, you should have a qualification in machine learning engineering first to be able to understand the course.
The Future Of Computing
Machine learning is one of the fastest growing and most innovation-rich fields in computing right now. In an unbelievably short space of time, the field has gone from practically non-existent to one of the most important directions in the development of future digital technologies. At its heart, it is an attempt to model high level abstractions in data via multi-level processing, and there is little doubt that it will be at the forefront of technological development, especially in terms of artificial intelligence.
Find out more about the course here: Teach Yourself Deep Learning.