deep learning

noun

computing

: a form of machine learning in which the computer network rapidly teaches itself to understand a concept without human intervention by performing a large number of iterative calculations on an extremely large dataset

Deep learning involves feeding machines lots of data so the AI can learn patterns itself without requiring humans to program knowledge into the machine.

—Mike Cherney

In deep learning, multiple neural networks are "stacked" on top of each other, or layered, in order to create models that are even better at prediction because each new layer learns from the ones before it.

—Derrick Harris

—sometimes used before another noun

The purpose of many deep learning systems is to minimize the amount of time spent feeding or quizzing a piece of software …

—Erik Sofge

Examples of deep learning in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

No doubt Sutton has highlighted an important factor—the declining cost of computation—in the recent triumph of artificial neural networks (or deep learning or computational statistics). —Gil Press, Forbes, 30 Oct. 2024

Fourteen years ago, for example, Nvidia first saw deep learning show up as a workload that needed to be accelerated by its GPUs. —Michael J. Miller, PCMAG, 23 Oct. 2024

Combined with deep learning programming, the team’s multi-receptor skin quickly identified materials with 99.56-percent accuracy, and sensed objects as far away as 150 mm. —Andrew Paul, Popular Science, 25 Sep. 2024

As noted in the introduction, in late 2023 and early 2024, Meta’s Yann LeCun was arguing there will be no real harm forthcoming from open-source AI, even as some of his closest collaborators outside of industry, his fellow deep learning pioneers Geoff Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, vigorously disagreed. —Gary Marcus, Fortune, 17 Sep. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1986, in the meaning defined above