Deep learning tools help users dig into advanced analytics data

At Twitter Inc., Hugo Larochelle's job is to develop an understanding of how users of the social network are connected to each other and what interests them in order to categorize and promote content that includes tweets, images and videos. To help accomplish that, he and his fellow data analysts use an emerging technology: deep learning tools. As Larochelle, a research scientist at Twitter, explained during a presentation at the Deep Learning Summit in Boston this month, deep learning is a category of machine learning that seeks to understand complex problems, such as interpreting images or text-based natural language. He and other proponents say deep learning techniques -- which lean heavily on the use of neural networks -- are more useful than traditional machine learning when data analytics applications involve unstructured data or require subjective interpretations. And deep learning is quickly becoming a hot field in the realm of advanced data analytics.