Now, to make these powerful AI systems more accessible to smaller-scale developers and businesses, Intel acquisition Movidius is launching the Neural Compute Stick, which packs deep learning algorithms into a standard USB thumb drive.

Over the years, the brain-power of neural networks has been set loose on cancer screening, mapping the human genome, and creating trippy works of art. But most of these endeavors have come out of big organizations like Google.

With the Movidius Neural Compute Stick, Intel says it's "democratizing" the technology, so we might see creative applications from small-scale developers, such as rigging up an AI system to stop cats pooping on the lawn. The brain of the Stick is a Myriad 2 visual processing unit (VPU), which is specifically designed for mobile and wearable devices. That means it's fast and fully-programmable, yet has an ultra-low power consumption and a small physical footprint.