The idea itself wasn’t new—scientists had been experimenting with similar models since the 1950s—but the computers of the time were still small and slow, and the early results were uneven enough that the field drifted in and out of fashion.
The question, however, never really disappeared.
If machines could recognize patterns in language, images, and music, it seemed natural to wonder whether they might eventually learn those patterns for themselves.
And somewhere in that question lay the beginning of the next part of this story.