Google Artificial Intelligence 'Alpha Go Zero' Just Pressed Reset On How To Learn

Remember (vaguely) how you learned to walk, talk, ride a bike, or drive? It was messy and full of mistakes, but the skills you learned that way stayed. Outside of living systems, it's been challenging to structure strong enough algorithms to take in "real life experience" and develop sticky, adaptable behaviors for artificial intelligence. "It starts from a blank slate and figures out only for itself, only from self-play, and without any human knowledge, or any human data, or features, or examples, or intervention from humans. It discovers how to play the game of Go from first principles," says DeepMind's professor David Silver.