Re: Deep Learning?
"Deep" refers to the new algorithms' abilities to learn deep architectures - that is, neural networks with serveral (3 or 4) hidden layers. The multiple hidden layers are what give the NN it's power, but historically, machine learning algorithms have performed poorly on such neural networks.
The difference in the first deep learning methods was to train the neural networks layer by layer, in an unsupervised manner. This did a lot to "sort out" the data, and made the later back propagation phase more tractable.
Since then, a variety of different architectures and methods have been discovered, and the phrase "Deep Learning" has broadened somewhat to represent the new resurgence in neural network methods.
Deep learning is absolutely not B.S. - though calling it A.I. is a little misleading. What it is is a much more powerful data modelling / prediction paradigm, which allows a new class of applications (speech recognition / language translation etc).
Biting the hand that feeds IT
