AI's Cool New Thing: Capsule Networks (explained)

There's a buzz in AI circles around "capsule networks," a new variant on neural networks that backers say could simplify, cut the costs of, commoditize and, in the end, democratize how deep learning systems are taught to do what we want them to do. How can it do all this? Capsule networks hold out the hope of tacking one of the biggest problems in AI: radically reducing the amount of data (and compute) needed to train deep learning systems. This in turn means AI could become available to the broader market, no longer consigned to a few companies with mammoth compute resources and infinite volumes of data – i.e., the FANG* companies. In fact, a FANG company, Google, is the father of capsule networks.