These days, I work in the field of machine learning , which is a sub field of the field artificial intelligence . Today's hottest machine learning method is deep learning . Deep learning was known as neural networks when I grew up in the late 90's. The fundamental motivation of neural networks is to represent the human brain using computers (both hardware and software). The field has a long history, beginning in 1958 with Frank Rosenblatt's paper, " The Perceptron: A probabilistic model for information storage and organization in the brain " ( PDF ). We have come a long way since then, thanks to people like Geoffrey Hinton and his deep learning progeny. The human brain can do about one quadrillion logical operations per second, which is known as a petaflop of computational ability (see Brains vs. Computers ). These days we have become smarter and don't try to build a single massive computer (called a super computer ). Instead, we connect a bunch of co...