What is TensorFlow, and how are businesses using it?

Google caused a stir when it open sourced its TensorFlow software back in November 2015, and the technology is starting to make its way into the mainstream. The machine learning software library is the next generation of DistBelief, which was internally developed by the Google Brain team at the search giant for a multitude of tasks such as image search and improving its speech recognition algorithms. TensorFlow is a deep neural network, so it learns to perform a task through positive reinforcement and works through layers of data (nodes) to help it determine the correct outcome. By open sourcing the TensorFlow library of machine learning code, Google is facilitating the simpler construction, training and deployment of complex deep neural nets. TensorFlow doesn't exactly give every developer the ability to harness machine learning but it does provide both a Python and C/C API to link into a developer's program.