A dummy's guide to Deep Learning (part 1 of 3) -- The Bleeding Edge

Deep learning is a branch of machine learning that has shown incredible results on very difficult tasks like recognizing objects from an image, understanding speech and languages, and of course, playing board games. A bunch of smartest people have been working on it for decades, and it's absolutely state-of-the-art. Since you've clicked into a dummy's guide, chances are that you are a curious dummy. So first of all, let me answer a few questions I know a curious dummy might ask. It's software programs trying to mimic the human brain. The way it forms, the way it learns and the way it responds.