Researchers gather at Brown to discuss next-generation artificial intelligence

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- The past few years have witnessed a revolution in artificial intelligence. AI systems are beating humans on reading comprehension tests, clobbering board game champions and enabling cars to drive themselves. Even more mundane AI systems, like smartphone apps that recognize faces and personal assistants that understand verbal commands, were seemingly insurmountable challenges just a decades or so ago. These recent breakthroughs have been made possible in large part by a technology known as deep learning or deep neural networks -- algorithms that have become the unseen force behind modern AI. Every time a phone responds to "Hey Siri," or Google translates a sentence from Swedish to Swahili, deep neural networks are at play.