DeepMind AI's new way to sort objects could speed up global computing

An algorithm used trillions of times a day around the world could run up to 70 per cent faster, thanks to an artificial intelligence created by UK-based firm DeepMind. It has found an improved way for computers to sort data that has been overlooked by human programmers for decades. "We honestly didn't expect to achieve anything better: it's a very short program, these types of programs have been studied for decades," says Daniel Mankowitz at DeepMind. Known as sorting algorithms, they are one of the workhorses of computation, used to organise data by alphabetising words or ranking numbers from smallest to largest. Many different sorting algorithms exist, but innovations are limited as they have been highly optimised over the decades.