Maze-Solving Artificial Intelligence Teaches Itself to Take Shortcuts

Most humans naturally look for the shortest route between two points. It saves time, energy, and often headaches to find the speediest and most efficient path from point A to point B. However, that skill is no longer specific to living creatures. A team of engineers developed an artificial intelligence program that learned to look for shortcuts through a complicated maze. While the engineers laid the foundation for the AI's shortcut seeking, the program effectively taught itself -- developing structures and methods similar to how humans develop shortcuts in their own problem-solving. The study was published in the most recent edition of the journal Nature, and it comes from researchers attached to the DeepMind group.