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An Anonymous Coward writes:

The NY Times covers in a very in-depth article Google's contribution to the recent revolution in deep learning through its application in Google Translation. A great read that covers the journey from new theories to practice in less than 10 years. This piece is surprising very technical as it tries to explains the history, the people and the technology behind the recent AI revolution. Take the time to read the full story here.

It is, in fact, three overlapping stories that converge in Google Translate's successful metamorphosis to A.I. — a technical story, an institutional story and a story about the evolution of ideas. The technical story is about one team on one product at one company, and the process by which they refined, tested and introduced a brand-new version of an old product in only about a quarter of the time anyone, themselves included, might reasonably have expected. The institutional story is about the employees of a small but influential artificial-intelligence group within that company, and the process by which their intuitive faith in some old, unproven and broadly unpalatable notions about computing upended every other company within a large radius. The story of ideas is about the cognitive scientists, psychologists and wayward engineers who long toiled in obscurity, and the process by which their ostensibly irrational convictions ultimately inspired a paradigm shift in our understanding not only of technology but also, in theory, of consciousness itself.

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