Predictions for Deep Learning in 2017

The first hugely successful consumer application of deep learning will come to market: I predict that deep learning's first avid embrace by the general public will come in 2017. And I predict that it will be to process the glut of photos that people are capturing with their smartphones and sharing on social media. In this regard, the golden deep-learning opportunities will be in apps that facilitate image search, auto-tagging, auto-correction, embellishment, photorealistic rendering, resolution enhancement, style transformation, and fanciful figure inception. Where audio processing is concern, deep learning's first mainstream success in 2017 may very well be in composing music that feels like it was created by an actual human musician. Deep learning may also enter our lives in the coming year as the intelligence that driving a new generation of wearables that helps disabled people to see, hear, and otherwise sense their surroundings.