You can now download the source code that sparked the AI boom
CHM releases code for 2012 AlexNet breakthrough that proved "deep learning" could work.
On Thursday, Google and the Computer History Museum (CHM) jointly released the source code for AlexNet, the convolutional neural network (CNN) that many credit with transforming the AI field in 2012 by proving that "deep learning" could achieve things conventional AI techniques could not.
Deep learning, which uses multi-layered neural networks that can learn from data without explicit programming, represented a significant departure from traditional AI approaches that relied on hand-crafted rules and features.
The Python code, now available on CHM's GitHub page as open source software, offers AI enthusiasts and researchers a glimpse into a key moment of computing history. AlexNet served as a watershed moment in AI because it could accurately identify objects in photographs with unprecedented accuracy—correctly classifying images into one of 1,000 categories like "strawberry," "school bus," or "golden retriever" with significantly fewer errors than previous systems.
