Footballing robots have had an upgrade. Two-legged robots trained using deep reinforcement learning, which is driven by artificial intelligence, can walk, turn to kick a ball and get up after falling faster than robots working from scripted lessons. Guy Lever at Google DeepMind and his colleagues put battery-powered Robotis OP3 robots, which are about 50 centimetres tall and have 20 joints, through 240 hours of deep reinforcement learning. This technique combines two key tenets of AI training: reinforcement learning sees agents gaining skills through trial and error, with a target of being rewarded for choosing correctly more often than choosing wrongly, while deep learning uses layers of neural networks – attempts to mimic the human brain – to analyse patterns within the data the AI is shown. The researchers compared their bots against robots working from pre-scripted skills.

This week in artificial intelligence (AI) news, we take a look at AI and other tech being used to fight novel coronavirus (COVID-19), how AI and technology are impacting our society, and the implications for wearable tech. As the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) spreads throughout the world, individuals from various backgrounds and disciplines, such as healthcare and tech, are coming together to figure out how to solve this crisis as well as mitigate the growing fear from the general public. One area that is working towards this goal is artificial intelligence (AI). In a report last month, the World Health Organization (WHO) said, "AI and big data were a key part of China's response to the virus." One way this tech is being utilized is through anonymized data collected on people's movements, helping them to predict the spread of the virus.