I think this new speech recognition improvement by Microsoft depends on deep networks and it's results are very impressive.

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/news/features/speechreco... http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/mavis/

That might just be a single application but if it extends into other domains it might end up being very valuable indeed.

It will eventually become just another tool of course just like anything else but if it brings 10-20% improvements in even a few other long-stagnant areas I would agree with saying that it is a big deal.