Neural Networks takes center stage in AI revolution

Given the current buzz around the whole industry, you could be forgiven for thinking that the whole of artificial intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning sprang magically from out of the oceans of research five years ago, but for those of us who've been providing AI solutions to enterprises for several decades we can but watch recent interest and smile knowingly. However, the appearance of Neural Networks (NN) on the center stage over the same timescale has been little short of phenomenal. Ever since Horace Barlow's pioneering experiments of the 1950s, AI researchers have had a fondness for Neural Networks in the ambitious hope that one day they'd recreate the power of the human brain. But even when I helped create the first version of IDOL Server 20 years ago, Neural Networks were not yet fit-for-purpose, a bit player on the AI scene, slow to train and prone to over-fitting. Then came the Long Short-term Memory improvements in speech-to-text of around ten years ago that started the revolution that has resulted in Neural Networks' powering the wonderfully-spooky sounding field of Deep Learning and finally achieving the recognition that its persistent academic fan base always imagined it would one day receive.