AI that builds AI: Self-creation technology is taking a new shape

The majority of artificial intelligence (AI) is a game of numbers. Deep neural networks, a type of AI that learns to recognize patterns in data, began outperforming standard algorithms 10 years ago because we ultimately had enough data and processing capabilities to fully utilize them. Today's neural nets are even more data and power-hungry. Training them necessitates fine-tuning the values of millions, if not billions, of parameters that define these networks and represent the strength of interconnections between artificial neurons. The goal is to obtain near-ideal settings for them, a process called optimization, but teaching the networks to get there is difficult.