It's worth reading Nielsen's essay "Will neural networks and deep learning soon ...

sampo · on July 27, 2015

And his answer is:

I believe that we are several decades (at least) from using deep learning to develop general AI.

goodness · on July 27, 2015

I think this is a better summary of his conclusions from that same paragraph:

I conclude that, even rather optimistically, it's going to take many, many deep ideas to build an AI.

The appendix linked there doesn't seem to be ready yet though. In any case, I like how this is phrased. I'd like to see some of the hype around deep learning calm down.

michael_nielsen · on July 27, 2015

The appendix is at http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com/sai.html