Before we discuss the types of neural networks covered in this chapter, it might be appropriate to revisit the definition of deep learning and then continue addressing all these types.
Deep learning revisited
Recently, on February 9, 2020, Turing Award winner Yann LeCun gave an interesting talk at the AAAI-20 conference in New York City. In his talk, he provided clarity with respect to what deep learning is, and before we give this definition here, let me remind you that LeCun (along with J. Bengio, and G. Hinton) is considered one of the fathers of deep learning, and received the Turing Award for precisely his achievements in the area. Therefore, what he has to say is important. Secondly, throughout this book, we have not given a strong definition of what deep learning is; people might be thinking that it refers to deep neural networks, but that is not factually correct – it is much more than that, so let's set the record straight once and for all.