Deep Learning is a subset of machine learning that uses artificial neural networks with many layers (hence 'deep') to model complex patterns in data. Unlike traditional machine learning, which often requires manual feature extraction, deep learning models can automatically learn representations of data with multiple levels of abstraction.
The term 'Deep Learning' was introduced to the machine learning community by Rina Dechter in 1986, but it gained modern traction in the mid-2000s with the work of Hinton, Bengio, and LeCun. The explosion of data and GPU computing power in the 2010s fueled its rapid rise.
Deep Learning is the technology behind self-driving cars, voice assistants, facial recognition, and generative AI. It has achieved state-of-the-art results in fields ranging from healthcare (diagnosis) to finance (trading) and entertainment (deepfakes).