Among the consequences of big data is a wealth of relevant minutiae that can be used to train machine learning and other models. That often translates into processing-intensive steps required to train models to perform a specific task. In response, technology startups and government-funded university researchers are promoting a new machine intelligence approach called "lifelong" machine learning as a way to accelerate model training. The latest entrant is Neurala, which this week took the wraps off its lifelong deep neural network technology. The Boston-based startup claims its AI approach can slash training time from upwards of 15 hours to as little as 20 seconds by utilizing "incremental learning."