The Computational Limits of Deep Learning

Understand

Deep learning's recent history has been one of achievement: from triumphing over humans in the game of Go to world-leading performance in image classification, voice recognition, translation, and other tasks.

• But this progress has come with a voracious appetite for computing power.
• This article catalogs the extent of this dependency, showing that progress across a wide variety of applications is strongly reliant on increases in computing power.
• Extrapolating forward this reliance reveals that progress along current lines is rapidly becoming economically, technically, and environmentally unsustainable.