DeepMind AI learns physics by watching videos that don't make sense

Teaching artificial intelligence to understand simple physics concepts, such as that one solid object can't occupy the same space as another, could lead to more capable software that takes less computational resources to train, say researchers at DeepMind. The UK-based company has previously created AI that can beat expert players at chess and Go, write computer software and solve the protein-folding problem. But these models are highly specialised and lack a general understanding of the world. As DeepMind's researchers say in their latest paper, "something fundamental is still missing". Now, Luis Piloto at DeepMind and his colleagues have created an AI called Physics Learning through Auto-encoding and Tracking Objects (PLATO) that is designed to understand that the physical world is composed of objects that follow basic physical laws.