Deep learning, big data and artificial general intelligence: 2011–present In the first decades of the 21st century, access to large amounts of data (known as "big data"), cheaper and faster computers and advanced machine learning techniques were successfully applied to many problems throughout the economy. In fact, McKinsey Global Institute estimated in their famous paper "Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity" that "by 2009, nearly all sectors in the US economy had at least an average of 200 terabytes of stored data". By 2016, the market for AI-related products, hardware, and software reached more than 8 billion dollars, and the New York Times reported that interest in AI had reached a "frenzy". The applications of big data began to reach into other fields as well, such as training models in ecology and for various applications in economics. Advances in deep learning (particularly deep convolutional neural n...