The Last 5 Years In Deep Learning

As we're nearing the end of 2017, we've come to the 5 year landmark of deep learning really starting to hit the mainstream. For me, I think of AlexNet and the 2012 Imagenet competition as the coming out party (although researchers have definitely been working in this field for quite a bit longer). It's been just 5 years and we've absolutely revolutionized the way we look at the capabilities of machines, the way we build software (Software 2.0), and the ways we think about creating products and companies (Just ask any VC or startup founder). Tasks that seemed impossible just a decade ago have become tractable, granted you have the appropriate labeled dataset and compute power of course. In this post, we'll overview the last couple years in deep learning, focusing on industry applications, and end with a discussion on what the future may hold.