Deep learning could reveal why the world works the way it does

Here's where things get interesting. The "colored MNIST" data set is purposely misleading. Back in the real world we know that the color of the markings is completely irrelevant, but in this particular data set, the color is in fact a stronger predictor for the digit than its shape. So our neural network learns to use color as the primary predictor. That's fine when we then use the network to recognize other handwritten numbers that follow the same coloring patterns.