SECAI Core · phase 1 of 15 · noun

Deep learning

A refinement of machine learning that enables a machine to develop strategies for solving a task given a labeled dataset and without further explicit instructions.

The Explain card

Plain English
Deep learning is machine learning using many-layered neural networks. Given a labeled dataset, the network works out its own useful features and strategies without explicit instructions.
Example
A phishing detector is shown raw screenshots of login pages labeled "real" or "fake". Instead of engineers choosing features, the network learns by itself which visual cues betray a fake.
Why it matters
Because the network invents its own features, nobody can fully read its reasoning. That opacity hides bias, backdoors and strange failure modes, and it is what makes adversarial examples possible.
Hook
More layers, more power, less visibility into why.

Word knowledge

How the word is built, where it came from, and what it sits beside in memory.

In a sentence

The sandbox runs a deep learning classifier on the raw bytes of each uploaded executable before the sample is detonated.

Why these words
  • deep Old English dēop, extending far down supplies the depth half, so the learning hangs on many stacked layers rather than a shallow net
  • learning Old English leornung, the act of getting knowledge names the classroom activity the phrase assigns to that stack
Where it came from
Origin
English compound from Old English dēop (extending far down) and leornung (the act of getting knowledge); as a neural-net label, popularized by Geoffrey Hinton and colleagues
Entered the language
2006
What changed
Deep had meant extending far down, then profound. Learning had meant a person acquiring knowledge. Rina Dechter used the pair in 1986 for a search that looked many steps ahead. Neural-net labs then used the same adjective for stacked hidden layers, and Hinton's 2006 papers made the pair the everyday name for that style of training.
How it is spelled
Pattern
ee spells the long /iː/ in native English deep, keep, sleep
Pattern
-ing turns a verb into a noun of activity
Breaks the pattern
the noun phrase stays two words; the hyphen appears only when it modifies another noun
Breaks the pattern
deep keeps ee from Old English ēo, while cheap and leap took ea for the same sound

Spelled like

  • keep
  • sleep
  • steep
  • training
Broken into chunks
  • deep
    • deepen
    • deeply
    • deepfake
  • learn
    • learner
    • unlearn
    • relearn
  • ing
    • training
    • computing
    • reasoning
What it sits beside

Same subject

Same shape

Learning compounds

Deep compounds

  • deepfake
  • deep web
  • deep freeze

Core AI paradigms

Where it sits in the deck

Phase 1: What AI Is: Core Concepts and Paradigms

You cannot secure, govern, or attack something you cannot define — establish what AI actually is before any other concept can land.

Neighbours in this phase