Postscript

Mind

There are some things that have not yet been covered. Neural nets are able to get solutions in a human like way. As they become more advanced a question that might well appear is are they just clever machines or do they have minds? This is a very large area much of it based on the meaning of the word mind. This is now getting into the realms of philosophy and it is not possible to put down even a tiny fraction of that subject here. So I will give my opinion, machines will not have minds in the near future but eventually they will.

Finally

The new technology of neural nets that has become of interest because of its ability to solve some of the problems of digital computers have, in fact, been around just as long as digital computers. Unfortunately they were ignored in their early stages because digital computers were easier to design and make and were quickly taken up as the "best" option. It is only now that interest has again turned to neural nets that we can see how useful they are. These developments are "recent" and this stage is much like the early days of digital computers. Neural nets are now here and in my opinion they will become just as much a part of everyday life as the computer has today.