4 Artificial Neural Networks
In this chapter, we give an overview of the most common artificial neural networks which are being used today. Perhaps the crucial thing which differentiates modern searches for artificial intelligence from those of the past is that modern approaches tend to emphasise adaptivity. This is done in artificial neural networks with learning and we define two of the major approaches to learning as supervised (or learning with a teacher) and unsupervised. We illustrate both techniques with standard methods. Now the artificial neural networks which are in use today are not truly “smart adaptive systems”; even though they are based on models of a physical entity – the brain – which is truly a smart adaptive system, something seems to be missing. We conjecture that a combination of some of our modern searches for intelligence might be closer to a smart adaptive system and so we investigate a combination of statistical and neural techniques at the conclusion of this chapter.