Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a word that you might start to see more often these days. AI has become a hot topic not only in academic society, but also in the field of business. Large tech companies such as Google and Facebook have actively bought AI-related start-ups. Mergers and acquisitions in these AI areas have been especially active, with big money flowing into AI. The Japanese IT/mobile carrier company Softbank released a robot called Pepper in June 2014, which understands human feelings, and a year later they have started to sell Pepper to general consumers. This is a good movement for the field of AI, without a doubt.

The idea of AI has been with us for decades. So, why has AI suddenly became a hot field? One of the factors that has driven recent AI-related movements, and is almost always used with the word AI, is deep learning. After deep learning made a vivid debut and its technological capabilities began to grow exponentially, people started to think that finally AI would become a reality. It sounds like deep learning is definitely something we need to know. So, what exactly is it?

To answer the previous questions, in this chapter we'll look at why and how AI has become popular by following its history and fields of studies. The topics covered will be:

If you already know what deep learning is or if you would like to find out about the specific algorithm of the deep learning/implementation technique, you can skip this chapter and jump directly to Chapter 2, Algorithms for Machine Learning – Preparing for Deep Learning.

Although deep learning is an innovative technique, it is not actually that complicated. It is rather surprisingly simple. Reading through this book, you will see how brilliant it is. I sincerely hope that this book will contribute to your understanding of deep learning and thus to your research and business.