Deep learning use cases aren't limited to big tech companies

When digital advertising company Laughlin Constable was approached by the Wisconsin State Cranberry Growers Association about a project to use deep learning to identify pests in cranberry bogs, the idea was met with skepticism. First of all, it's not the kind of project an advertising firm typically takes on. And it was also unclear if the growers had the technical foundation on which to build this kind of deep learning capability. But speaking at the Spark AI Summit in San Francisco, the company's vice president of engineering, Sam Saha, said he felt it was worth trying as a deep learning use case. "There are lots of businesses out there and they don't have the talent pool [to use AI]," he said.