Alphabet's DeepMind Is Using Games to Discover If Artificial Intelligence Can Break Free and Kill Us All

DeepMind, the artificial intelligence (AI) unit of Google owner Alphabet, is trying to find out whether AIs can learn how to cheat. The research is potentially important because of the fears of many--such as Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking--that AIs could eventually end up turning on us, taking over the world and/or killing us when they get smart enough. Of course, there are plenty of people who think such fears are overblown, or who dismiss the very idea of an "intelligence explosion," but DeepMind clearly thinks the problem is at least worth addressing. According to Bloomberg, it is doing so through a test that involves running AI algorithms in simple, two-dimensional, grid-based games. What we call AI these days is really based on a concept called machine learning, where algorithms can learn how to do things without being shown how to do them--they effectively teach themselves how to evolve, in order to achieve a goal set by their creator.