An AI learnt to drive an autonomous car in 20 minutes - Roadshow

A team of researchers in the UK have taught an autonomous car to stay in its own damn lane in just 20 minutes -- an impressive feat considering I know a few human drivers that couldn't achieve that in their lifetime. Road rage aside, the team at Wayve, a company founded by researchers from Cambridge University's Engineering Department detailed their "reinforcement learning" algorithm in a blog post on June 28. The algorithm, in tandem with a human safety driver, taught the car how to remain within a lane over a period of "15-20 minutes." Reinforcement learning for AI has been shown to be highly effective before, with DeepMind Technologies showing it can learn how to play games such as Go or Chess and OpenAI showing that its AI plays 180 days worth of Dota 2 every single day. While defeating human players in incredible complex games like Go or Dota 2 is certainly impressive, teaching a car to drive itself is another wheelhouse altogether.