CNNs, RNNs, Autoencoders, GANs

In this episode, we explore four foundational neural network families—CNNs, RNNs, autoencoders, and GANs—and examine the specific problems each was designed to solve. Rather than treating deep learning as a monolithic field, we break down how these architectures emerged from different data challenges: spatial structure in images, temporal structure in sequences, representation learning for compression, and adversarial training for realistic generation.We show how CNNs revolutionized vision through local receptive fields, weight sharing, and residual shortcuts; how RNNs, LSTMs, and GRUs captured temporal dependencies through recurrent memory; how autoencoders and VAEs learn compact, meaningful latent spaces; and how GANs introduced game-theoretic training that unlocked sharp, high-fidelity generative models. The episode closes by highlighting how modern systems combine these families—CNNs feeding RNNs for video, adversarial regularizers improving latent spaces, and hybrid models across domains.This episode covers:• Why CNNs solved the inefficiency of early vision models and enabled deep spatial hierarchies• How residual networks overcame vanishing gradients to train extremely deep models • How RNNs, LSTMs, and GRUs capture sequence memory and long-term context• Bidirectional recurrent models and their impact on language understanding• How autoencoders and VAEs learn compressed latent spaces for representation and generation • Why GANs use adversarial training to produce sharp, realistic samples • How conditional GANs enable controllable generation • Where each architecture excels—and why modern AI stacks them togetherThis episode is part of the Adapticx AI Podcast. You can listen using the link provided, or by searching “Adapticx” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or most podcast platforms.Sources and Further ReadingAll referenced materials and extended resources are available at:https://adapticx.co.uk