Brian Gaines observes that computing has been a recursive technology: it supports other technologies that in turn support the progress of computing itself, leading to a positive exponential feedback loop and an exponential growth.
Editor’s notes: This keynote article is written by Brian Gaines, the inventor of stochastic computing. He shares both a view back on the history of neuromorphic computing and a view forward on deep learning as a new information processing technology. Gaines observes that computing has been a recursive technology: it supports other technologies that in turn support the progress of computing itself, leading to a positive exponential feedback loop and an exponential growth. He infers that the same holds for deep learning with its ability to meta-learn solutions to its own design problems. —Ilia Polian, University of Stuttgart