Google Releases a Free Course on Deep Learning

Free learning Meets Deep learning

Just after Google released its machine learning system Tensor Flow to the public three months ago, the company has now decided to go further and actually teach people about deep learning by offering a free course on Udacity.

The announcement, which was made on a blog post, states that Google aims to provide machine learning enthusiasts a quick and straightforward path to solving real-life (and real interesting) problems via machine learning.

The course spans three months, and it requires at least 2 years of programming experience and experience with GitHub among others. To that end, if you want to take the class, you are going to need to bring a little bit of experience with you.

Google is not the only company offering resources and knowledge needed to tackle Deep Learning. Canon has previously sponsored a panel on Deep Learning while NVIDIA has offered courses teaching the same.

Deep Learning Explained

 

Silicon Valley and other technological centers have great incentive to be interested in Deep Learning. Deep Learning is a form of Machine Learning in which, instead of coding and programming functions related to how machines and software will operate, the machines are instead fed large amounts of data sets which they process with a variety of techniques (from neural networks to decision trees) to calculate and make decisions.

A visual explanation of how Deep Learning work is illustrated here.

It is used in a variety of functions, such as voice analysis, threat detection, and object recognition. Google has used it to improve its search business further, while its rival Microsoft has used it allow almost instantaneous translation in Skype.

The focus on Deep Learning is of vital importance, as it is seen as a precursor to True AI, with various companies investing in it further. IBM's Watson, which has been used in things like healthcare and playing Jeopardy, also utilizes Deep Learning to make its own decisions.

Google's recent actions might be also pushing other software companies to open source and release its Deep Learning assets to the public. Indeed, just a few days after Google's announcement, Microsoft also announced that it too will be releasing its Deep Learning toolkit on GitHub to widen its audience.

It only remains to be seen if these efforts will lead to a revolution in AI and Machine Learning.