A remarkably inquisitive artificial-intelligence system developed by a team of researchers at NYU has learned to play a game similar to Battleship with mind-blowing skill. In the simple game the researchers created, players seek to find their opponent's ships hidden on a small grid of squares by asking a series of questions that can be answered with a single number or word. Their program figures out how to ask these questions as efficiently as possible. Taking inspiration from cognitive psychology, and using a fundamentally different approach from most of today's AIs, the system shows how machines may learn how to ask useful questions about the world. The program treats questions as miniature programs, allowing it to learn from just a few examples and to construct its own questions on the basis of what it has learned.