Chapter 1. Deep learning and JavaScript
This chapter covers
- What deep learning is and how it is related to artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning
- What makes deep learning stand out among various machine-learning techniques, and the factors that led to the current “deep-learning revolution”
- The reasons for doing deep learning in JavaScript using TensorFlow.js
- The overall organization of this book
All the buzz around artificial intelligence (AI) is happening for a good reason: the deep-learning revolution, as it is sometimes called, has indeed happened. Deep-learning revolution refers to the rapid progress made in the speed and techniques of deep neural networks that started around 2012 and is still ongoing. Since then, deep neural networks have been applied to an increasingly wide range of problems, enabling machines to solve previously unsolvable problems in some cases and dramatically improving solution accuracy in others (see table 1.1 for examples). To experts in AI, many of these breakthroughs in neural networks were stunning. To engineers who use neural networks, the opportunities this progress has created are galvanizing.