With an electrode inserted into a specific area of its brain, the rat was allowed to pulse the implant by pulling a lever. It kept returning for more: insatiably, incessantly, lever-pulling. In fact, the rat didn't seem to want to do anything else. Seemingly, the reward center of the brain had been located. More than 60 years later, in 2016, a pair of artificial intelligence (AI) researchers were training an AI to play video games. The goal of one game, Coastrunner, was to complete a racetrack. But the AI player was rewarded for picking up collectable items along the track. When the program was run, they witnessed something strange.

Flow Shop Scheduling (FSS) has been widely researched due to its application in many types of fields, while the human participant brings great challenges to this problem. Manpower scheduling captures attention for assigning workers with diverse proficiency to the appropriate stages, which is of great significance to production efficiency. In this paper, we present a novel algorithm called Self-encoding Barnacle Mating Optimizer (SBMO), which solves the FSS problem considering worker proficiency, defined as a new problem, Flow Shop Manpower Scheduling Problem (FSMSP). The highlight of the SBMO algorithm is the combination with the encoding method, crossover and mutation operators. Moreover, in order to solve the local optimum problem, we design a neighborhood search scheme. Finally, the extensive comparison simulations are conducted to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed SBMO. The results indicate the effectiveness of SBMO in approximate ratio, powerful stability, and execution time, compared with the classic and popular counterparts.

In 1953, a Harvard psychologist thought he discovered pleasure – accidentally – within the cranium of a rat. With an electrode inserted into a specific area of its brain, the rat was allowed to pulse the implant by pulling a lever. It kept returning for more: insatiably, incessantly, lever-pulling. In fact, the rat didn't seem to want to do anything else. Seemingly, the reward centre of the brain had been located. More than 60 years later, in 2016, a pair of artificial intelligence (AI) researchers were training an AI to play video games. The goal of one game – Coastrunner – was to complete a racetrack. But the AI player was rewarded for picking up collectable items along the track.

In 1953, a Harvard psychologist thought he discovered pleasure – accidentally – within the cranium of a rat. With an electrode inserted into a specific area of its brain, the rat was allowed to pulse the implant by pulling a lever. It kept returning for more: insatiably, incessantly, lever-pulling. In fact, the rat didn't seem to want to do anything else. Seemingly, the reward centre of the brain had been located. You can listen to more articles from The Conversation, narrated by Noa, here. More than 60 years later, in 2016, a pair of artificial intelligence (AI) researchers were training an AI to play video games. The goal of one game – Coastrunner – was to complete a racetrack. But the AI player was rewarded for picking up collectable items along the track.

Tesla Inc's chief executive officer told employees on Monday the company is undergoing a "thorough reorganization," as it contends with production problems, senior staff departures and two crashes last week involving its electric, self-driving cars. CEO Elon Musk said in an email it was "flattening the management structure to improve communication," combining functions and trimming activities "not vital to the success of our mission" in the reorganization. The company confirmed the note that was disclosed earlier by the Wall Street Journal. Tesla is at a critical juncture as it tries to fix production headaches that have slowed the rollout of its Model 3 sedan, a mid-market car seen as key to the company's success, and as it expands on other fronts. Tesla shares fell 1.3 percent to $297 on Monday.

Tesla's chief executive, Elon Musk, told employees on Monday the company was undergoing a "thorough reorganization" as it contends with questions over its production schedule and two crashes involving its electric self-driving cars. Musk said in an email that as part of the reorganization the company was "flattening the management structure to improve communication, combining functions where sensible and trimming activities that are not vital to the success of our mission". Tesla confirmed the veracity of the email, which was disclosed by the Wall Street Journal. On a 2 May earnings call, Musk said the company was "going to conduct sort of a reorganization restructuring of the company … this month and make sure we're well set up to achieve that goal". He added: "The number of sort of third-party contracting companies that we're using has really gotten out of control, so we're going to scrub the barnacles on that front. You've got barnacles on barnacles. So there's going to be a lot of barnacle removal."