The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Computer scientists often deal with abstract problems that are hard to comprehend, but an exciting new algorithm matters to anyone who ...

An artificial-intelligence algorithm that discovers its own way to learn achieves state-of-the-art performance, including on some tasks it had never encountered before. Joel Lehman is at Lila Sciences ...

Imagine a town with two widget merchants. Customers prefer cheaper widgets, so the merchants must compete to set the lowest price. Unhappy with their meager profits, they meet one night in a ...