NASA and this Google employee are using AI to find new planets, maybe one day alien life

Google is famous for its "20 percent time," whereby staffers are allowed to spend the equivalent of one workday a week on passion projects that they believe will benefit the company. The idea is that creativity and innovation happen when people are allowed to experiment. Things like Gmail and Chromebooks have resulted, according to a Google spokesperson. Whether the policy still exists has been debated over the last few years. But on Thursday, Google announced that artificial intelligence researcher and senior software engineer Chris Shallue discovered two new planets -- and it was born of a flex time side venture.