[eva1984]

Old time neural networks not even came close to current models in terms of performance.

I clearly remember in my machine learning class, one professor mentions neural networks and says it is slow and impossible to tame when the layers goes up thus loses its popularity. That is just 3-4 years ago.

[tormeh]

I took some machine learning classes a while 1-2 years ago at the TU Berlin, and while there was some emphasis on neural nets, it was just as much emphasis on SVMs, with the remainder of the time filled with other traditional models. The lecturer had done some research into SVMs, though, so it was probably just bias rather than old-fashionedness. He was also of the mathematical sort, and I suspect the unanalyzable nature of NNs rubbed him the wrong way. I'm not saying that all other AI/ML methods should be abandoned, but NN definitely didn't get the attention it deserved. Deep learning techniques weren't covered at all, for example.