As deep learning continues gathering steam among researchers, entrepreneurs and the press, there’s a loud-and-getting-louder debate about whether its algorithms actually operate like the human brain does.
The comparison might not make much of a difference to developers who just want to build applications that can identify objects or predict the next word you’ll text, but it does make a difference. Researchers leery of another “AI winter” or trying to refute worries of a forthcoming artificial superintelligence worry that the brain analogy is setting people up for disappointment, if not undue stress. When people hear “brain,” they think about machines that can think like us.
