The document discusses artificial neural networks (ANNs) which are computational algorithms inspired by the human brain that are used to model complex statistical data through interconnected processing elements called neurons. While inspired by biology, ANNs saw renewed popularity due to powerful computational tools enabling their large-scale implementation across industries like science, engineering, and consumer applications for tasks like pattern recognition and trend analysis. Current research focuses on improving ANNs' ability to model and interpret large and complex datasets through optimization techniques and parallelization across many processors.