A fascinating piece from Siddhartha Mukherjee - “The Algorithm Will See You Now.”
“Thrun was
convinced that he could outdo these first-generation diagnostic devices by
moving away from rule-based algorithms to learning-based ones—from rendering a
diagnosis by “knowing that” to doing so by “knowing how.” Increasingly,
learning algorithms of the kind that Thrun works with involve a computing
strategy known as a “neural network,” because it’s inspired by a model of how
the brain functions. In the brain, neural synapses are strengthened and
weakened through repeated activation; these digital systems aim to achieve
something similar through mathematical means, adjusting the “weights” of the
connections to move toward the desired output. The more powerful ones have
something akin to layers of neurons, each processing the input data and sending
the results up to the next layer. Hence, “deep learning.””