At DESY s ARES accelerator, the research team wants to gain experience with autonomous operation. Particle accelerators are universal tools: They help in production processes in industry, in tumor therapy in hospitals and enable unique discoveries and insights in research. Growing demands on the stability and properties of particle beams make a manual operation of these complex devices increasingly challenging – and require the highest possible level of automation to support operators. A new project of DESY and KIT (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) is now taking the first steps towards a fully autonomously operated accelerator. The cooperation "Autonomous Accelerator," which is supported by the Helmholtz Association and the two participating Helmholtz research centers within the framework of the Helmholtz Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Unit, brings "reinforcement learning" to the operation of two linear accelerators at DESY and KIT. Reinforcement learning involves measuring state values and adjusting control variables to determine their influence on each other, thus learning a control strategy that also takes into account its effects in the future.