AI is learning how to create itself

But it's not what the bots are learning that's exciting--it's how they're learning. POET generates the obstacle courses, assesses the bots' abilities, and assigns their next challenge, all without human involvement. Step by faltering step, the bots improve via trial and error. "At some point it might jump over a cliff like a kung fu master," says Wang. It may seem basic at the moment, but for Wang and a handful of other researchers, POET hints at a revolutionary new way to create supersmart machines: by getting AI to make itself. Wang's former colleague Jeff Clune is among the biggest boosters of this idea. Clune has been working on it for years, first at the University of Wyoming and then at Uber AI Labs, where he worked with Wang and others. Now dividing his time between the University of British Columbia and OpenAI, he has the backing of one of the world's top artificial-intelligence labs. Clune calls the attempt to build truly intelligent AI the most ambitious scientific quest in human history.