Nothing deep about deep learning

At Chicago, I recall undergraduate students gawking about deep learning to Professor Lafferty after class. I recall professor Lafferty had hesitation in his voice at the time. It felt as though he was discussing a controversial, politically-sensitive issue. At that time, we knew only a fraction of what we know now and many of us were still wondering how deep learning could be anything more than non-linear regression. I had no motivation or curiosity to understand the subject and even the trio at Stanford--the ones who gave us the best-selling ML book of all time--only put a few paragraphs in the first edition of their textbook saying just that.