AI For Everyone: Startups Democratize Deep Learning So Google And Facebook Don't Own It All

When I arrived at a Stanford University auditorium Tuesday night for what I thought would be a pretty nerdy panel on deep learning, a fast-growing branch of artificial intelligence, I figured I must be in the wrong place--maybe a different event for all the new Stanford students and their parents visiting the campus. Despite the highly technical nature of deep learning, some 600 people had shown up for the sold-out AI event, presented by VLAB, a Stanford-based chapter of the MIT Enterprise Forum. The turnout was a stark sign of the rising popularity of deep learning, an approach to AI that tries to mimic the activity of the brain in so-called neural networks. In just the last couple of years, deep learning software from giants like, Facebook, and China's Baidu as well as a raft of startups, has led to big advances in image and speech recognition, medical diagnostics, stock trading, and more. "There's quite a bit of excitement in this area," panel moderator Steve Jurvetson, a partner with the venture firm DFJ, said with uncustomary understatement.