Google's AI Reasons Its Way around the London Underground

Artificial-intelligence (AI) systems known as neural networks can recognize images, translate languages and even master the ancient game of Go. But their limited ability to represent complex relationships between data or variables has prevented them from conquering tasks that require logic and reasoning. In a paper published in Nature on October 12, the Google-owned company DeepMind in London reveals that it has taken a step towards overcoming this hurdle by creating a neural network with an external memory. The combination allows the neural network not only to learn, but to use memory to store and recall facts to make inferences like a conventional algorithm. This in turn enables it to tackle problems such as navigating the London Underground without any prior knowledge and solving logic puzzles.