An overview of deep learning tools

The technology industry is currently in the midst of an artificial intelligence (AI) renaissance. Initial work in this field fell something short of its longer term potential due to limitations in the technology platforms of the day, somewhere around the 1980s. As such, the first age of AI was ignominiously relegated to movies where it powered talking cars, humanoid cyborgs and a selection of other fancifully imagined products. The current reawakening of AI has been facilitated by advances in hardware from processing to memory to data storage; but also by our ability to now develop complex algorithmic structures capable of running on these new super-powered backbones. As IT departments start working to apply AI-enablement to the enterprise software stacks, it is worth taking a step back and examining what is actually happening inside the synaptic connections that go to make our AI "brains" so smart.