# Neural network

Concept · [Building with AI](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/ai)

Also called: neural networks, neural net, artificial neural network, neurons, layers

A kind of software model made of many layers of simple math units connected by [weights](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/weights), loosely inspired by the brain. It learns patterns from examples. Modern [AI models](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/model) are large neural networks.

**For example:** A neural network [trained](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/training) on thousands of labeled photos learns to tell cats from dogs without anyone writing rules for whiskers or ears.

## Connects to (9)

- [Deep learning](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/deep-learning): Machine learning using neural networks with many layers.
- [Weights](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/weights): The numbers inside a model that it learned during training.
- [Parameters](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/parameters): The values a model learns during training.
- [Transformer](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/transformer): The design that most modern language models are built on, introduced by Google researchers in 2017.
- [Training](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/training): Teaching an AI model by showing it a very large number of examples before anyone uses it.
- [Diffusion model](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/diffusion-model): A kind of AI model that creates images, and sometimes audio or video, by starting from random noise and removing it step by step until a…
- [Model](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/model): The trained system at the center of an AI product.
- [Interpretability](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/interpretability): Research into what is happening inside an AI model: which internal patterns represent which ideas and how they lead to an output.
- [Backpropagation](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/backpropagation): The calculation that works out how much each weight in a neural network contributed to an error, layer by layer from the output back, so…

Map view: https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/neural-network