Artificial Intelligence (AI) consists of a set of problems (converting audio to text, detecting if a person is in an image, recommending a product to a customer…) and approaches for solving those problems. Historically, each AI problem had its own approaches, and those approaches came in various forms including traditional software programming and learning a program from examples of desired behavior, also known as “machine learning”. While there were a few successes, AI saw limited use in industry. That all changed in the early 2010s with the resurgence of machine learning technique called deep learning.

Deep learning, also known as artificial neural networks, is a machine learning approach to AI problems loosely inspired by biological neural networks “brains”, namely the collection of simple computational units, "neurons", grouped into layers and stacked to form a "network" of neurons.

Due to deep learning’s expressivity and flexibility, along with increased data and computational power, deep learning rapidly took over as the dominant approach for all AI problems.

Technology companies with deep learning research labs such as Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon now use deep learning to power their industry leading AI systems, including AI assistants (Alexa, Google Home, Siri), recommender systems (Netflix, Pinterest, Facebook), language translation, and document processing, in addition to numerous other valuable applications in countless industries.

New deep learning techniques are constantly being introduced, resulting in large performance gains year-over-year. Given the young age of deep learning and its rapid developments, experienced deep learning practitioners are difficult to recruit and justify outside of companies with deep learning research labs (Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple).

Woodward AI consists of passionate deep learning experts inspired by and forged on the diversity of our customers’ problems. We pride ourselves on delivering the highest performing AI solutions based on the latest developments in deep learning. If you’d like to learn how deep learning and Woodward AI can help you solve your problems, we’d love to talk to you. You can book a call with us here.