More thoughts about how 2016 was the breakthrough year for AI, esp. deep learning and machine learning.
DeepMind had a pretty big year in 2016. Their AlphaGo program famously beat world champion Lee Sedol. They used reinforcement learning to improve speed of learning in certain contexts by an order of magnitude. They significantly reduced the cooling costs at Google.
Separately, Fred Wilson at Union Square Ventures had a recap of his 2016 predictions where he said:
Artificial Intelligence has inserted itself into our every day lives. Whether its a home speaker system that we can talk to, or a social network that already knows what we are about to go out and purchase, or a car that can park itself and change lanes on the highway automatically, we are seeing AI take over tasks that we used to have to do ourselves. We are in the age of AI. It is not something that is coming. It is here. It may have arrived in 2014, or 2015, but if you ask me, I would put 2016 as the year it had its debut in mainstream life. It is exciting and it is scary. It begs all sorts of questions about where we are all going in the next thirty to fifty years. If you are in your twenties, AI will define your lifetime.