Neural Network
Etymology
From "neural," relating to neurons, the brain’s signaling cells, plus network. Early models in the 1940s and 1950s took inspiration from how neurons fire and connect, arranging simple units in layers that pass signals forward. The biological metaphor is deliberately loose: an artificial neuron is a bit of arithmetic, not a living cell, and the resemblance to a real brain is inspirational rather than literal.
noun phrase · /NUUR-ul NET-wurk/
A machine-learning system loosely modeled on interconnected brain cells, tuned to recognize patterns.
What it names
The architecture underneath modern AI — image recognition, translation, chatbots — and hints, honestly, at how loose the brain analogy really is.
Example
A neural network trained on millions of photos learned to spot tumors radiologists sometimes miss.
Related idea
A neural network is one technique within machine learning; "deep learning" simply means a neural network with many stacked layers, which is what made recent leaps in AI possible.