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Fnord666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

Neural networks were all the rage for a while, but progress eventually slowed and interest cooled. Then, as computing power increased, the field experienced a renaissance, and deep learning was the new big thing.

Throughout this ebb and flow of interest, there has been an underlying, annoying fact: neural networks as currently implemented are not that great. Especially when you compare them with the brain of... well, pretty much any creature. Researchers have been trying to make neural networks that have all the advantages of the brain (and none of the disadvantages) for as long as the field has existed. And it may be that they've gone about it wrong. Now, some new work [doi.org] is suggesting that the only way to get the advantages of the brain is to accept the disadvantages as well.

Source:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/03/plastic-synapses-offer-hardware-alternative-to-neural-networks/ [arstechnica.com]

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