Before this devolves into the morass of outraged comments that usually comprises any discussion of patents, here is the golden rule I coined for such threads:

Before this devolves into the morass of outraged comments that usually comprises any discussion of patents, here is the golden rule I coined for such threads: RTFC: Read the Fucking Claims The claims are the only part of the patent that really matter because those are the only enforceable language. Plus, this is a patent application so the claims have not even been examined yet. Without commenting on the merits of this patent itself, remember that new applications of existing techniques are still novel, and hence patentable. In fact, if you think about it, almost all inventions and innovations are just applying novel combinations of well-known techniques to new use-cases. (Anything that doesn't fit that definition and introduces genuinely new methods is usually in the "groundbreaking" category.) So I'd guess "applying old technique to new problem" is probably the case here. I'm no subject matter expert, and there may be prior art that invalidates this, or it may not meet the non-obviousness bar... but when the "200 year old math" came about neural networks were not really a thing.