Machines can now finish the Rubik's Cube without human help

OK, let's break this down. The Rubik's Cube is pretty difficult, right? But you'd imagine it might be pretty easy for an artificial intelligence to break down and solve consistently, right? Creating an algorithm that can solve the Rubik's Cube is relatively simple -- the kind of algorithms that allow AI to beat humans at chess or Go or even DOTA 2! But creating a machine that can solve the Rubik's Cube without algorithms hand-crafted by human beings? Stephen McAleer and his colleagues at the University of California think they have solved the problem, with a process called "autodidactic iteration". Autodidactic iteration: McAleer and his team call it a "novel reinforcement learning algorithm that is able to teach itself how to solve the Rubik's Cube with no human assistance."