The One Percent Rule

A pivotal moment in the evolution of AI

Despite being written by two of the world’s leading AI developers actively engaged in new efforts, it’s rare for a research paper like the one below not to make headlines.

First, in a short interview David Silver confirms that they have built a system that used Reinforcement Learning (RL) to discover its own RL algorithms. This AI-designed system outperformed all human-created RL algorithms developed over the years. Essentially, Google DeepMind built an AI that invents better AI.

Second, the paper seeks to take AI back to its roots, to the early compulsions of curiosity: trial, error, feedback. David Silver and Richard Sutton, two AI researchers with more epistemological steel than most, have composed a missive that reads less like a proclamation and more like a reorientation, a resetting of AI’s moral compass toward what might actually build superintelligence. They call it “The Era of Experience”, and state