OpenAI will debut a novel approach to machine learning needed to sustain the momentum of AI research

Ilya Sutskever, director of OpenAI, an independent research group, will describe what might be the next big breakthrough in artificial intelligence today at EmTech Digital, a conference organized by MIT Technology Review in San Francisco. Sutskever will describe research showing an approach in machine learning that can perform even better than methods that have produced huge breakthroughs recently. His technique may also prove far more scalable. In a blog post describing the work, Sutskever and colleagues describe using "evolutionary strategies" to have machines figure out for themselves how to solve a complex task. The researchers say the approach is distantly related to a decades-old approach that involves optimizing algorithms using a process of simulated evolution.