DeepMind says it's given AI an imagination. Let's take a closer look at that

Google's AI boutique, DeepMind, known for dispelling human delusions of intellectual superiority by soundly beating the world's top Go players with computer code, has found that instilling its software agents with something like imagination helps them learn better. In two papers published this week – "Imagination-Augmented Agents for Deep Reinforcement Learning" and "Learning model-based planning from scratch" – the AI biz's brain boffins, based in Britain, describe novel techniques for improving deep reinforcement learning through what can generously be described as imaginative planning. Reinforcement learning is a form of machine learning. It involves a software agent that learns by interacting with a specific environment, usually through trial and error. Deep learning is a form of machine that involves algorithms inspired by the human brain, called neural networks.