Google's memory-boosted AI could help you navigate the subway

Modern neural networks are good at making quick, reactive decisions and recognizing patterns, but they're not very skilled at the careful, deliberate thought that you need for complex choices. Google's DeepMind team may have licked that problem, however. Its researchers have developed a memory-boosted neural network (a "differentiable neural computer") that can create and work with sophisticated data structures. If it has a map of the London Underground, for example, it could figure out the quickest path from stop to stop or tell you where you'd end up after following a route sequence. The key is how the AI uses its memory.