A conversation with AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio - Next at Microsoft

When Microsoft acquired deep learning startup Maluuba in January, Maluuba's highly respected advisor, the deep learning pioneer Yoshua Bengio, agreed to continue advising Microsoft on its artificial intelligence efforts. Bengio, head of the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms, recently visited Microsoft's Redmond, Washington, campus, and took some time for a chat. Let's start with the basics: What is deep learning? Yoshua Bengio: Deep learning is an approach to machine learning, and machine learning is a way to try to make machines intelligent by allowing computers to learn from examples about the world around us or about some specific aspect of it. Deep learning is particular among all the machine learning methods in that it is inspired by some of the things we know about the brain.