Mike Loukides

The history of deep learning goes back as far as 1943, when Walter Pitts and Warren McCulloch created a computer model based on the neural networks of the human brain. Today, if we asked a language model like GPT-3 to write an article about the history of deep learning, it might begin with that sentence. Many changes led from Pitts and McCulloch’s early neural network to what we now call “deep learning”: the addition of backpropagation (Yann LeCun and others), and the creation of “deep” networks with many “hidden layers” (Geoff Hinton and others) are perhaps the most important. And…

In August, a white hat hacker stole around $600 million-worth of cryptocurrency from a bitcoin-based platform before returning almost all of it. Earlier in the year, a ransomware collective gave Ireland’s Health Service Executive (HSE) a free decrypt tool after it was hit by an attack. So, are cybercriminals developing a conscience at long last? Not in the slightest. Ransomware remains one of the world’s biggest criminal industries – in fact, one of the biggest industries full stop. It’s difficult to put an exact figure on such shadowy activity, but it’s estimated to cost the global economy at least £30…