Stochastic neural network

Stochastic neural networks are a type of artificial neural networks, which is a tool of artificial intelligence. They are built by introducing random variations into the network, either by giving the network's neurons stochastic transfer functions, or by giving them stochastic weights. This makes them useful tools for optimization problems, since the random fluctuations help it escape from local minima.

Stochastic neural networks that are built by using stochastic transfer functions are often called Boltzmann machine.