Exhibit 4.2
1989A network that reads
Yann LeCun trains a network to recognise handwritten digits in postal ZIP codes. Related systems were later used for tasks such as reading bank cheques.
Why it is in the museum
Neural networks learn by adjusting large numbers of numerical weights. The idea is old, but the scale of data and computing made it far more powerful.
What supports this exhibit
Primary scientific paper
The use of backpropagation in a network for recognising handwritten postal codes.
Main source: LeCun et al. (1989), Neural Computation 1(4), 541–551.
What to keep in mind: Primary source.
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