Hands-On GPU Programming with Python and CUDA

Artificial neurons and neural networks

Let's briefly go over some of the basics of machine learning (ML) and neural networks (NNs). In Machine Learning, our goal is to take a collection of data with a particular set of labeled classes or characteristics and use these examples to train our system to predict the values of future data. We call a program or function that predicts classes or labels of future data based on prior training data a classifier.

There are many types of classifiers, but here we will be focusing on NNs. The idea behind NNs is that they (allegedly) work in a way that is similar to the human brain, in that they learn and classify data using a collection of artificial neurons (ANs), all connected together to form a particular ...