Cracking Open the Black Box of Neural Networks

There is a certain allure to the deep learning space in that the very inspiration is based on biomimicry. Deep learning is a subset of artificial intelligence (AI) with an architecture that roughly mirrors the human brain: information is processed through multiple layers to compute an outcome. Unlike other machine learning algorithms, which only have one or two layers, deep learning is "deep" because it has multiple layers – typically between 10 and 100 layers. Computations at each level build upon previous levels, allowing the network to learn more nuanced and abstract characteristics. Each layer is responsible for the detection of one characteristic, basing assumptions on earlier layers.